OW-rO'WORK 



AMOSRWELLS 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No, 

ShellA^-.^ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



I 



How to Work 



The "How" Series 



By Amos R. Wells 

How to Play 
How to Work 
How to Study 



How to Work 



By AMOS FU WELLS 

Author of" How to Play" " How to Study" etc. 




United Society of Christian Endeavor 
Boston and Chicago 



1 



_61407_ 

l-ibwu-jr of Co„ tfPe «J 

''wb Copies Rbxkco 
OCT 15 (900 









Copyright, 1900, 

by the 

United Society of Christian Endeavor 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. Pkocrastinating and Puttering .... 7 

II. Take Your Own Pace 13 

III. Work's Parables and Promises .... 17 

IV. " A, E, I » Workers 23 

V. "O, U' ; Workers 27 

VI. How to Feel Like It 31 

VII. Poor Kinds of Faithfulness 35 

VIII. Working to Break the Record .... 38 

IX. Workers That Consume Their Own 

Smoke 42 

X. Batting, and Doing Things 46 

XI. Hypnotic Laborers 50 

XII. Taking Hints 55 

XIII. Hurry Up!. 61 

XIV. Keeping Pencils Sharp 71 

XV. Four-Tracked Workers 74 

XVI. Getting-Ready Days and Finishing 

Days 79 

XVII. Buckling Down to Work 82 

XVIII. " Can" Conquers 85 

XIX. Prepared to Fail 91 

XX. The Shoemaker and His Last 94 

XXI. A Pride in Your Work 98 

XXII. Expensive Workmen 100 

XXIII. People That Mean Business 103 

XXIV. Where to Work 108 

XXV. What Is Under Your Head ? 115 

5 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. PAGE 

XXVI. Make Ready, Take Aim! 119 

XXVII. Heaping It On 126 

XXVIII. Time, the Worker's Gold Mine .... 129 

XXIX. The Bulldog Grip 137 

XXX. Our Breathing-Spells 144 

XXXI. The Trivial Round 151 



HOW TO WORK. 




CHAPTER I. 

PROCRASTINATING AND PUTTERING. 

WISH to give you my decalogue of 
work, my ten commandments of la- 
bor. And I want to write them, not 
on tables of stone, but on the fleshly 
tablets of your hearts. Now you each have 
two hearts, luckily, a right and. a left one, 
joined together ; so that I can divide my com- 
mandments into two tables, easy for you to 
remember. You are to fix the first table by 
the letter p. The commandments are: Do 
not procrastinate. Do not putter. Take your 
own pace. Read work's parables. Remember 
the promises. You are to fix the second table 
by the vowels, a, e, i, o, u. That is : Be am- 
bitious. Be easy. Be intelligent, Be orderly. 
Be upright. That is the outline of what I 
want to say to you in these opening chapters. 



8 HOW TO WORK. 

The first commandment of labor is, Do not 
procrastinate. There was once a Yankee- 
farmer whose acres were covered with bowl- 
ders, and very much needed stone fences. 
" I'll build 'em," said the Yankee, " to-morrow 
or next day, I guess." But after many to- 
morrows and next days a good fairy took him 
in hand. Wherever he walked, she threw 
great bowlders before him. He lifted them 
out of the way. She sent immense stones in 
front of his plow. He got a crowbar, and 
rolled them into the next furrow. She piled 
them on his wheelbarrow. In surprise he 
threw them off. At last she sent him a dream, 
— a dream of a stone fence, broad, square, neat, 
and strong, and far-reaching about his farm. 
" This is the fence," she cried in his ears, " the 
fence you might have made with the strength 
you used in throwing stones out of your way." 

Do you ever think of this, that it takes a 
certain amount of energy to reject tasks when 
they press upon you for the doing, that the 
worry over an unaccomplished duty is a bur- 
den it takes strength to bear ? Do you realize 
that I am speaking not in rhetorical exaggera- 
tion, but in literal exactness, when 1 say that 
procrastination requires power, and often a 
power that, when summed up, would do the 
deed? Oh, how we cheat ourselves! How 






PROCRASTINATING AND PUTTERING. 9 

we hammer away on cold iron ! How we set 
the mill to grinding after the water has passed, 
so that we must laboriously turn the mill- 
wheel ourselves ! 

The waste of strength is not the worst of it. 
" By the street of ' By and By ' one arrives at 
the house of ' Never." 5 That's the worst of 
it. Putting off means leaving off. Going to 
do is going undone, ten cases out of nine. 

Think of it. If the little grain of corn does 
not sprout in the springtime, the liberal sum- 
mer and wide autumn and the whole round 
year has henceforth no abiding-place for it. 
But if it begins to grow in that acceptable 
time, the crowded summer will find space for 
the tallest stalk it can push up, and the full 
autumn can contain its heavy ears. This is 
the interpretation of the parable : there is no 
room in all the infinite future for a single deed 
that ought to be done now. So the first com- 
mandment of labor is, Do not procrastinate. 

DO NOT PUTTERo 

The second commandment about labor is, Do 
not putter. This is the second in the order of 
time, but the first of all in the order of impor- 
tance. For a worker's prime virtue is vim. 
Yet there are thousands of workmen, so-called, 
whose practice, if not whose lips, read the text 



10 HOW TO WORK. 

in this way : " Whatsoever thy hands find to 
do, dilly-dally with all thy might." " Puttery, 
puttery, puttery," — that's what Tennyson's 
Yorkshire farmer would hear their horses' 
hoofs " sa-ay." 

Apropos of horses, there is a fairy story 
about a horse, which you have never heard, 
and which you ought to know. It is this : 
Mary Ann was attempting to drive, one day, 
along a straight road ; and before many min- 
utes the horse knew what Mary Ann knew at 
the start, that she did not know how to drive. 
She held the reins loosely, then she pulled 
them tight. She jerked now one side and now 
the other. She flapped them. She got them 
crossed. She kept up a constant clicking with 
her tongue. She fussed with the whip. At 
last Dolly, the horse, who was a very sensible 
old horse, got tired of such nonsense, and called 
on the horse- fairies to interfere. (This is a fairy 
story, you know.) So straightway they came, 
and while one unharnessed Dolly, and changed 
her with a tap of a magic wand into a girl like 
Mary Ann, another changed Mary Ann into a 
horse Like Dolly, and harnessed her in a jiffy. 
Then Dolly got into the carriage, and took her 
revenge on Mary Ann. And oh, such pullings 
and twitchings and Mappings and jerkingsl 
Mary Ann never forgot the lesson. Do you 



PROCRASTINATING AND PUTTERING. 11 

wonder what is the moral of my fairy story ? 
It is this : Drive your business, or your busi- 
ness will drive you. Go at your work in 
a straightforward, sensible way. Hold firm 
reins. Don't jerk and twitch and flap and 
fuss. Don't putter. For if you do, then in 
stern reality, and no longer in ridiculous fable, 
the retributive fairies of worry and vexation 
and disappointment and impatience and wasted 
time and strength and reputation will harness 
your soul to the tasks you should have ridden 
upon, and you will be driven unmercifully by 
the very powers you were made to drive. 

There is a beautiful word, which every one 
who aspires to the high title of "worker" 
must manage in some way to get into the vo- 
cabulary of his life. That word is " alert." 
What a picture flashes into our minds when 
we say it ! " Alert," — bright eyes, quickly 
moving as the Greeks loved to see them ; body 
in nice equipoise ready for prompt obedience ; 
motions delicate, exact, and swift ; speech clear- 
cut, quiet, and steady. That word " alert " is 
the poetical form of our American adjective, 
" business-like," the opposite of " puttering." 

A straight line, your geometries tell you, is 
the shortest path between two points. The 
same definition fits the word " alert," the word 
" business-like." It means taking the shortest 



12 HOW TO WORK. 

and easiest way to your goal. Is it mastery of 
a newspaper? You may putter over it an 
hour, or by alert skimming along headlines 
and coarse type you may get the very marrow 
out of that newspaper in ten minutes. Is it 
writing an essay ? You may putter over pen 
and paper for days, or, by alert watching of 
your mind and your reading, prompt jotting 
down of ideas, energetic blocking out of the 
essay, you may do it much better in one-fourth 
the time. Lazy folks, puttering folks, take the 
most pains, while they think they are taking 
the least. 

The King's business requireth haste. And 
this is one good reason why Christ's yoke is 
easy, because He teaches us to carry it with 
business-like alertness. There is a best way to 
do everything. That is also Christ's way, the 
easiest and shortest. The night cometh, when 
no man can work. Do not procrastinate. Do 
not putter. 




CHAPTEK II. 

TAKE YOUR OWN PACE. 

]0 not procrastinate. Do not putter. 
"We must set alongside of these the 
third commandment of labor : Take 
your own pace. Any good driver 
could tell you what would happen if you 
should harness up short-pacing Dolly with long- 
pacing Dobbin. The necessary compromise 
would wofully tire them both. 

You remember Dr. Holmes's felicitous com- 
parison of the short-legged man to the little 
Dutch clock, briskly ticking his way through 
life, while his long-legged brother is the 
eight-day wall-clock, with its solemn and slow 
vibrations. Well, people's minds are just that 
way. And the little fellow may have the 
eight-day mind, and the tall fellow the brisk 
little Dutch-clock mind, and it would beat 
Time himself if you should force them to vi- 
brate together. 

Let me take a stride of two feet, nine and 
one-half inches, and I can walk twenty miles 
without stopping ; but force me to keep step 

13 



14 HOW TO WORK. 

with a stride of two feet, eight and one-half 
inches, or with one of two feet, ten and one- 
half inches, and I should be worn out in eight 
miles. This is one of the first truths that a 
teacher is made to learn, in that school where 
he is receiving lessons as fast as he gives them ; 
and I do not believe that the great Teacher of 
us all is less considerate, or that he expects as 
much from his dull scholars as from his bright 
ones. 

This is the one danger in reading inspiring 
biographies. They are likely to urge us to the 
futile imitation of men and women whose pace 
is longer and swifter far than ours. And 
when we try that pace, as some will, we are 
apt to draw no other conclusion from our cer- 
tain failure than that their way is not our 
way. It might be our way, if we took our 
pace to it. These great men and women may 
be able to learn twenty languages, master a 
dozen arts, write poetry and novels and ser- 
mons, and play ten musical instruments, do- 
ing it all well, and you think you can do it. 

You have been fooled by this that fools us 
all, at one time or another. Everybody carries 
about with him the germs of power to do al- 
most everything, and sometimes he finds this 
out, — finds out that he has music in him, and 
poetry, and art, and skill to do nice handiwork, 



TAKE YOUR OWN PACE. 15 

and strength for the hammer and the plough, 
and a tongue to move men. And then he be- 
gins to develop them all, and gets into the 
same scrape I did this summer. 

I thought it would be nice to have my own 
flowers, that I might not be obliged to depend 
on the floral charity of my neighbors. So I 
spaded up a bed about four feet by two, made 
nice little trenches, filled them with seed, cov- 
ered them up, and waited in faith. I put into 
that little bed one paper of phlox, one of 
mignonette, one of sweet alyssum, one of asters, 
one of dahlias, one of zinnias, and, for good 
measure, one of something I did not know. 
All my seeds sprouted finely, and you may 
fancy the result. I am glad I had that ex- 
perience, because the present condition of that 
flower-bed furnishes the best illustration on 
this planet of the sage phrase, " Jack-of-all 
trades, master of none." 

" The question is not," says Souvestre, un- 
wisely, " to discover what will suit us, but for 
what we are suited." That is not the question 
at all. Too many things are possible for us. 
The question is to discover what of all our pos- 
sibilities God wants us to develop. Paul 
might have been a distinguished orator, states- 
man, philosopher, general, author, merchant ; 
but he said, " This one thing I do." 



16 HOW TO WORK. 

Power and inclination call in many ways ; 
duty, only in one. Take that one way and 
the pace in it that God has made natural for 
you, neither fretted because others get along 
faster than you, nor proud because you are 
permitted to surpass others ; and you will be 
crowned with Paul's crown at the end of the 
way. Do not procrastinate. Do not putter. 
Take your own pace. 



CHAPTER III. 
work's parables and promises. 







HE fourth labor commandment is, 
Read work's parables. Did you 
ever notice that just two-thirds of 
Christ's parables are based on events 
in some business or other ? Shepherds, bank- 
ers, merchants, housewives, farmers, fishers, 
stewards, lawyers, day-laborers, — all find their 
occupations illuminated in these marvellous 
stories. How much Christ must have thought 
of human labor ! 

But did He exhaust the parables of work in 
those twenty-nine short stories ? They were 
given for examples merely, to teach us how to 
regard these occupations of ours. We are to 
make our work a college and a church ; and 
broom, saw, plough, and yardstick are to 
teach us and to preach to us. George 
Herbert, after all, has written the true psalm 
of labor : 

1 ' Teach me, my God and King, 
In all things Thee to see, 
And what I do in anything 

To do it as for Thee. 
• . . . • 

17 



18 HOW TO WORK. 

u All may of Thee partake ; 
Nothing can be so mean 
Which with this tincture, ' For Thy sake,' 
Will not grow bright and clean. 

11 A servant with this clause 
Makes drudgery divine ; 
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws 
Makes that and the action fine. 

u This is the famous stone 
That4urneth all to gold, 
For that which God doth touch and own 
Cannot for less be told." 

"With one line only of that priceless poem I 
am inclined to quarrel. No one can "make 
drudgery divine," for it is already so. But, 
alas ! how many poor drudges do not dis- 
cover the divinity of their drudgery, do not 
touch it with that " famous stone " of conse- 
cration which " turneth all to gold," do not 
read the parables of labor as Christ read 
them ! 

Let the clerk in a drug store see that he 
may be an assistant of the great Physician. 
Let the farmer's boy know that the seed, even 
the literal seed he plants, is a word of God. 
Let the young mechanic see in saw and ham- 
mer reminders of the world's Carpenter. Let 
the cook bethink herself that her bread may 
be bread of the higher Life as well as of the 
lower, and that the Hesli she prepares, if the 



WORK'S PARABLES AND PR03TISES. 19 

Master's spirit be in the preparation, may be 
meat indeed. Let the busy housemaid, as she 
sweeps and garnishes, prepare that house for 
the seven spirits of blessedness. Let the 
earnest student of surveying, philosophy, 
zoology, never forget that all ways lead to 
the one Way, all truths to the one Truth, all 
life to the one Life. These are some of work's 
parables. 

O that I could emblazon this thought on the 
soul of every worker in the world — that the 
secret of all joy in labor is in these words, 
" my Father's business " ! My teaching, your 
studying, farming, housework, — our Father's 
business. That thought once fixed in the 
world's commerce, greed would die, dishonesty 
would hide its head, hearts weary of trifles 
would exult in them, hearts anxious for results 
w T ould grow grandly confident, for would not 
God care for His own ? 

Except the Lord built the house, they labor 
in vain that build it. . . . It is in vain for 
you that ye rise up early, and so late take rest, 
and eat the bread of toil. For the Lord giveth 
unto His beloved in their sleep, — not in their 
sloth, but in that restful dependence on Him 
that prevents anxious lying awake, since they 
have read the parables of their work and know 
that they are about their Father's business. 



20 HOW TO WORK. 

A few decades hence, at best, and how 
clearly each of us will know this ! How, in 
the revealing light of that day, what we call 
our real practical work will fade to the thin- 
ness of a fable, and that higher parabolic 
meaning which lies hidden in our work will 
stand forth as the one real and practical thing 
of all, to crown us or condemn us ! 

Do not procrastinate. Do not putter. Take 
your own pace. Kead work's parables and 
ponder them. 

The last commandment on the first table is 

REMEMBER THE PROMISES. 

There is a tool that every carpenter must put 
into his tool-chest, or the fullest chest is empty. 
There is an ink into which every author must 
first dip his pen, or the blackest ink will be in- 
visible. There is a word that every student 
must read before he can understand a line of 
his text-books. That tool, that ink, that word, 
is faith. The universe is full of promises. 
Better be "a blind spinner in the sun" of 
these promises than own sharpest eyes which 
cannot see them. 

What are these promises for the worker? 
One is history, which is a crowded procession 
of toilers rewarded, — some soon, some late, 
but all gloriously. One is nature, whose every 



WORK'S PARABLES AND PROMISES. 21 

rainbow promises seed for the sower and bread 
for the eater, whose liberal fields, rich sun, and 
fruitful seasons are crammed with guaranties 
for labor from the Father who worketh hith- 
erto. One is our own spirit, which in its loft- 
iest moments sees that everything is good and 
just and no toil unrewarded. One is God's 
written Word, a long promise of joy to those 
who labor together with Him. 

I watch the noble young men as they try to 
open the doors of this world. Some apply a 
gold key ; that is genius. Some have keys of 
flashing silver ; they rely on zeal. Iron keys 
are borne by others ; they are the plodders. 
And for all these the bolts fly back, to be sure, 
but the doors remain obstinately closed. But 
I see a few who carry, in addition to their 
keys of gold or silver or iron, a tiny key that 
glitters like a diamond. This they thrust into 
an unnoticed cranny of the heavy doors, which 
fly back eagerly to give them entrance. Those 
diamond keys mean confidence — confidence in 
God, trust in the order of things, faith in one's 
self and one's fellows. 

" Can he work ? " " Has he brains ? " " Has 
he tact ? " These are not the first questions 
that the world asks about a young man, but, 
strange to say, it is this : " Does he expect to 
succeed ? " If the answer to this is " No," or 



22 HOW TO WORK. 

a half-hearted " Yes," all is up with the young 
man ; but if he believes in his life, the world 
believes in him. The cynical old maxim is an 
untrue one : " Nothing succeeds like success." 
Let the young workman adopt a bolder and 
more genuine principle : " Nothing succeeds 
like the expectation of success." Learn that 
your rightful endeavors are in the line of a 
literally resistless current of promises. You 
have half learned how to work when you have 
learned that. Remember the promises. 




CHAPTER IV. 



E have filled out the first table of 
commandments about labor, which 
we were to remember by the letter 
P : do not procrastinate ; do not 
putter; take your own pace; read work's 
parables ; remember the promises. Kow I 
must treat my second table of commandments 
with undeserved brevity. These five were to 
be fixed by the vowels, A, E, I, O, U. 

First, be ambitious. A great man once 
wished to select from a crowd of applicants a 
teacher for his young boys. " Xow for a test," 
he said, " you shall each show me how you 
would teach my sons to do one of the simplest 
things, to break a stone in two." So he led 
them to a pile of bowlders. The first took the 
hammer, and quite dexterously split a slab of 
limestone. " Very neat," remarked the great 
man, " but limestone is easily broken." The 
second, with a shrewd blow, parted a mass of 
hard quartz. " Better," said the great man ; 
" but something is lacking still." The third 

23 



24 HOW TO WORK. 

chose one equally large piece of quartz, broke 
it nicely, and then selected a very tough 
bowlder of greenstone. The hammer fell 
sharply, and the obstinate stone was shattered. 
" That's what I want my sons taught," said 
the great man, — " to go on from what is hard 
to what is harder." 

The great man understood what parts 
mediocrity from success. The first is content 
with mastery of the difficult. The second 
takes to heart Browning's grand words : 

lt Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
Or what's heaven for ? " 

" Good things are hard." That was Plato's 
favorite saying. But Plato himself would 
agree that what is good fades to worse and 
worst unless the worker goes on to harder and 
hardest. Be ambitious. 

Then, be easy. That is, never be contented 
until your work has become second nature to 
you. You know how the young girl learns to 
play on the piano. How like witchery it 
seems, as her white fingers flash rippling along 
the keys, moving them to obedient music! 
But that pliant dexterity came by way of stiff 
knuckles, aching muscles, weary hours, strong 
patience, and the " try " thai means "triumph." 

])<> you remember how it was when you 



u ^, E, I" WORKERS. 25 

learned to ride the bicycle ; how tensely you 
held your arms, and how bent was your mind 
on turning your wheel to balance the push on 
the opposite pedal ; how your brain whirled 
and your shoulders complained at the end of 
your first mile ? Now you pedal instinctively, 
and you turn the wheel to and fro with no 
consciousness of effort. 

And the girl does not really play the piano, 
nor the boy ride the bicycle, nor any worker 
do any work at his best, until this thing has 
happened to him, that his work has become his 
play. " What we must do," says Coleridge, 
" let us love to do." It is a noble chemistry 
that turns necessity into pleasure. And so 
against our sixth labor commandment, Be am- 
bitious, — go on from hard to harder, — we must 
hasten to set this seventh, Be easy, — continue 
at the hard work until it has become play to 
you. 

Next, be intelligent. Add to your work 
that last important item in the old lady's rec- 
ipe for bread. " Stir in a little judgment," 
said the dear old soul. You want me to esti- 
mate the yield of that wheat-field ? Let me 
see. Bich, deep loam. Good situation. 
Ought to give twenty bushels to the acre. But 
stay. Let me see the farmer. That stupid, 
lazy lout ? The field will not give ten bushels 



26 HOW TO WORK. 

to the acre. I am wrong, and the farmer is 
that thoughtful young fellow, crumbling the 
soil in his hand and examining it with such 
care ? His field will give thirty bushels to the 
acre, such a good ) r ear as this. " As the man 
is worth, his land is worth," says the shrewd 
Frenchman. 

" Stir in judgment." Do not make two trips 
of it with one hand full when the filling of 
both hands might finish it in one trip. Do not 
run upstairs to bring something down and then 
go up again to take something up. Do not go 
down town for a stick of sealing- wax, and 
after your return bethink yourself of the meat 
you must get for dinner. Do not hunt through 
the book page by page, when a glance at the 
index would show you what you wish. 

The old proverb is right. " Contrivance is 
better than hard work," not merely because it 
is more economical of God-given strength and 
time, but because it puts our work on a higher 
plane. For what does Ruskin tell us ? " It is 
only by labor that thought can be made 
healthy, and only by thought that labor can 
be made happy." Bo intelligent, then, as well 
as ambitious and easy. 



CHAPTER V. 



0, U 77 WORKERS. 




JE not only ambitious, easy, and intelli- 
gent, but be orderly, too. I wonder 
how many thousand lives have been 
straightened out by that fine ad- 
monition from " the old English parsonage 
down by the sea," " Do ye nexte thynge." It 
has unwound the tangle of my life many a 
time, and when duties pulled this way and 
that, when time was short and work was long, 
and a maze of worriment surrounded me worse 
than any Cretan labyrinth, this was a better 
clew than Ariadne's to lead me into clear ways 
again, — " Do ye nexte thynge." 

There are some men whose idea of order is 
like this, that at 7 A. m. they will consume two 
eggs, a plate of hash, and a cup of coffee. At 
7:30 they will put on a dressing-gown 
buttoned at the third buttonhole from the 
top. At 7:40 they will dip a stub pen 
into violet ink and write five and one-half 
pages of their new novel. And if anything 
is wrong with hash, buttonhole, or violet ink, 

27 



28 HOW TO WORK. 

all is over for the day, and they must wait 
until the next 7 A. m. for an orderly start. 

The order of a worker who means business 
is not the order of a whimsical schedule, but 
the order of proximity. Take up ) 7 our work 
vigorously as it presents itself to you. Get up 
a mental turnstile that will make your crowd 
of duties step forward one by one. Permit no 
jostling. Give yourself closely to the first as 
the experienced ticket agent does at the sta- 
tion, finish it, call out " Next," and let the 
turnstile turn the first out and another in. 

My word for it, there's a magic in such a 
method that will seem fairly miraculous to a 
man who is in the habit of worrying about one 
task with one-half his brain, and planning an- 
other with the other half, while his hands are 
executing the third. Be ambitious in your 
work, easy, intelligent, orderly. 

Finally, be upright. That is, be straight. 
Be honest. Give worth for wages. Despise 
from your very soul all braggart short-cuts to 
knowledge, to money, to influence and posi- 
tion. Work your way up. That's your only 
insurance against tumbling down. 

These are golden words of Emerson's : "] 
hate the shallow Americanism which hopes to 
gel rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps 
on midnight tables, skill without study, mas- 



"0, U" WORKERS. 20 

tery without apprenticeship, power through a 
packed jury or caucus, or wealth by fraud. 
They think they have got it, but they have 
got something else, — a crime, which calls for 
another crime, and another devil behind that •, 
these are steps to suicide, infamy, and the 
harming of mankind. In this life of show, 
puffing, advertisement, and the manufacture of 
public opinion, all excellence is lost sight of in 
the hunger for sudden performance and un- 
earned praise." 

Let that never be said of you. I will not 
add more, lest you charge me with preaching. 
Cry " Excelsior," though your path lies all in 
the valley. Allow no endeavor to stop short 
of thorough performance. Be upright. 

Now my second table is complete, bearing 
the exhortations to ambition, ease, intelligence, 
order, and uprightness in work. I must add 
one thing more ; it is the gold, which, pressed 
into all the words thus inscribed on your 
heart-tablets, will make them shine with 
heaven's own light. That gold is prayer. 
Need I say to Christians that without that 
element all ten of these qualifications of the 
noble workman go for naught? Need I re- 
mind you of our height's littleness, of our 
sight's blindness, of our strength's utter feeble- 
ness before our commonest tasks ? But there 



30 HOW TO WORK. 

is a Workman in our midst taller than the sons 
of men, whose eye knows no barrier and whose 
power knows no obstacle, and, best of all, 
whose love speeds to our whispered prayers. 
Are we workers together with Him ? 



v 


Win 1 i 



CHAPTER VI. 

HOW TO FEEL LIKE IT. 

]OW much easier we can work " when 
we feel like it " than when we do 
not ! The task that on other less 
fortunate da} r s hitches and halts and 
grinds like a bicycle with dirt in its bearings, 
now rolls itself off as smoothly and delightfully 
as a bicycle newly cleaned and oiled rolls off 
the miles. So true is this, that in many a piece 
of work quite half of the undertaking may be 
considered accomplished before you begin, if 
you only " feel like " beginning. 

Therefore it is a very important problem for 
the practical worker, " How can I feel like it 
all the time ? How can I abolish blue Mon- 
days? How can I get rid of the sense of 
monotony ? How can I keep my work always 
fresh, always interesting and enjoyable?" 
Such a spirit would be worth more to most 
merchants than a capital of a hundred thousand 
dollars, and some of them are sensible enough 
to know it and to plan their lives so wisely 
that they are always eager for their work, and 

31 



32 HOW TO WORK. 

go to it at the end of twenty years with the 
appetite and zest of a novice. 

One of the secrets of the matter is that 
at the very start they took up work that 
they could like, work for which they were 
fitted, work in which they might reasonably 
expect to succeed. O, those poor giris that 
by the thousand are at this very moment 
pushing rebellious fingers up and down the 
ivory keyboard, with not a scrap of music 
in their souls, just because their ambitious 
mammas want to make pianists of them, though 
they are " dying " to crochet, or trim bonnets ! 
O, those thousands of poor boys who at this 
moment are poring over law books that to 
them are dry as last century's leaves, just be- 
cause their ambitious papas want to make bar- 
risters of them, while their own unfettered 
fancy would mount a horse and herd cattle on 
the great plains, or board a train to get partic- 
ulars of the railroad wreck for the Herald ! 
Can Susie be expected to like it ? Can Tom 
be expected to like it ? 

But, granted that the work is a task that he 
is able to like, one way always to " feel like it " 
is never to wait till he feels like it, but to pitch 
into the work as soon as the time for work 
comes, with no reference to the feelings what- 
ever. Lead forth the nag, though your head 



HOW TO FEEL LIKE IT. 33 

aches. Jump into the saddle, though rheuma- 
tism rebels. Canter away, with your teeth 
clinched and your brows set. It will not be 
long before your lips will begin to smile, and 
the wrinkles will come out of your forehead, 
and on the home stretch your eyes will sparkle 
and your cheeks will glow, and you will feel 
like it very much indeed. 

The second rule is, " Don't stop till you do 
feel like it." This is very important. Napo- 
leon had what we have come to call the pres- 
tige of success. He had won in so many bat- 
tles that his foes keeled over almost at sight of 
him, to save him the trouble of knocking them 
down. Stick to every pursuit, every task, un- 
til it becomes enjoyable, and you will acquire 
for yourself just such a prestige, so that what- 
ever distasteful undertaking you may approach 
will say to itself, " There comes a man who 
never leaves a task till he has subdued it ut- 
terly, body and spirit. I might as well make 
myself agreeable to him at the start." And it 

win. 

I suppose this is all there is of it, though 
various subordinate thoughts might be pressed 
home, such as these : In approaching a disa- 
greeable task, first take up all the easier and 
more agreeable portions of it ; conquering them 
will give you a feeling of strength, and you 



34 HOW TO WORK. 

will say to yourself, " There is so much out of 
the way, and without difficulty ; certainly I 
can accomplish what is left." Trick yourself 
into a game, as by saying, " Now let me see 
how many sticks of wood I can saw in ten 
minutes, and then let me run a race with my- 
self the second ten, and then try to beat that 
record, and so on." Keep before your mind 
the result, the reward ; the eye on the goal 
shortens the mile. Fall in love with processes. 
If you are painting a barn, see how far you 
can make a brushf ul go, and without spilling a 
drop. If you are baking a pie, think up some 
unique pattern with which to ornament the 
crust. There is no task, not even digging a 
ditch, but has interest and even romance in it, 
if you dig in the right way. 




CHAPTER VII. 

POOR KINDS OF FAITHFULNESS. 

HAT ! " you say, " can any kind of 
faithfulness be a poor kind ? " Yes, 
indeed. Listen. 

A mistress of a large house once 
assigned her four housemaids each to a room, 
to clean it and put it in order before noon. 

The first housemaid, Susan, said to herself 
as she set vigorously to work, " Now there's 
Betsey. She thinks she's so smart. I'll show 
mistress who is the best housemaid here. My 
room shall be cleaned perfectly, and set in 
order before that conceited Betsey is half 
through." But though Susan worked faith- 
fully, Betsey's room was finished first, and 
looked much nicer than Susan's. As soon as 
Susan saw this she threw down her tools 
and worked no longer. Her faithfulness was 
founded on emulation, and the superiority of 
her fellow- worker ended it. 

Kate, on the contrary, set herself doggedly 
to her task, saying, " I'll make this a job to 

35 



36 HOW TO WORK. 

be proud of. I propose to do it perfectly." 
She began in a little corner, and scrubbed and 
scrubbed, always seeing something more that 
needed doing in that corner, until noon came. 
The corner was perfect, but the rest of the 
room untouched. And so Kate's overfaithful- 
ness concerning a part of her task made her 
faithless in regard to the whole. 

The third was Milly, who was a very am- 
bitious girl. " If I clean this room well," she 
planned, " mistress may take more notice of 
me, and let me wait on the children, or even 
on herself, and then I may get to be governess, 
and then — who knows? — I may even set up 
a ladies' seminary of my own ! " So Milly 
worked very faithfully, her head full of such 
ambitious plans. Too full, however, for, quite 
engrossed in these enticing thoughts, she let 
fall a magnificent vase, and quite ruined it. 
So she became faithless in little things, because 
her faithfulness in them was only through 
hope of greater things. 

But Betsey, the fourth, loved her work and 
her mistress, and carried common sense and 
sprightliness to her tasks. She took no thought 
about the success of others, except to praise it. 
She judged of the thoroughness expected, by 
the time i^iven to the task. Her one ambition 
was to do her best in the present. And so it 



POOR KINDS OF FAITHFULNESS. 37 

happened that her work was accomplished 
first, and best. 

Faithfulness which springs from over-fond- 
ness for details, from emulation or from ambi- 
tion, is often very hard to tell from the true 
faithfulness. But it is not true, and nothing 
is true faithfulness which does not spring from 
love of the work, and love of the Master. 



i 


H 


& 


^1 



CHAPTER VIII. 

WORKING TO BREAK THE RECORD. 

HAVE grown very tired of hearing 
people talk about breaking the rec- 
ord. In my boyhood days a horse 
was thought to do something hand- 
some if he made his mile in 2:40, but such a 
horse is nowhere nowadays, the record has 
been so badly broken. Every steamship cap- 
tain who crosses the Atlantic is unhappy if he 
cannot bring back with him as part of his cargo 
a smashed record. Every sheriff who runs for 
office, no matter how well qualified for the 
position he may be, or how much the people 
like him, or what a respectable majority they 
give him, feels half-defeated unless in the elec- . 
tion he has broken somebody's record. News- 
papers strain every nerve to break the record 
of day's sales; locomotive engineers endanger 
lives to break the record of rapid runs ; popular 
preachers do sensational advertising in order to 
break the record of big congregations; nay, 
even nations are in reeled with the plague, 
and if France builds a big ship, Germany 

38 



WORKING TO BREAK THE RECORD. 39 

must straightway build one a few inches 
longer. 

Now I sometimes wish that I could take 
these poor, old, broken records in my arms, 
could mend them up and comfort them. They 
were getting along well enough; the world 
was acquainted with them and satisfied with 
them until some ambitious upstart came along 
and broke them, in order to patch himself up 
a crown out of the fragments. 

Understand me now, my readers. I am not 
such a ninny as to snarl at progress, simply 
because it upsets some of my old-fashioned 
notions ; only, it must be progress worth the 
making. Did you ever think what a vast dif- 
ference there is between making a record and 
breaking it ? When Tennyson wrote the 
sweetest lyrics of the world's literature he did 
not break any one's record, spoil any one's 
fame. People still read Burns and Shelley, 
Moore and Horace, with as much enjoyment 
as if Tennyson had never written. Tennyson 
simply made a sweet and noble record of his 
own. When Lincoln gained the presidency of 
the United States he did not break any one's 
record. Who knows or cares what his major- 
ity was, or whether Illinois gave him an un- 
usually large vote ? Mr. Lincoln made a rec- 
ord for himself which needs no lustre from the 



40 HOW TO WORK. 

broken records of other men. Have you ever 
observed which of the monthly magazines brag 
most loudly of their enormous subscription lists 
and make boldest claims of predominance over 
all others ? Does the Atlantic Monthly, or the 
other three which stand with it at the head of 
our American culture? No. The Atlantic 
Monthly would not wish to pose in the eyes of 
its readers as a record-breaker, but as a record- 
maker, a creator and not a racer. Conse- 
quently when we think of it we do not think 
of figures, — so many hundred thousand a 
month, so many tons of paper, — but we think 
of men, of Longfellow, Hawthorne, Holmes, 
Emerson, Whittier, and Lowell. 

In fine, that is the mischief of this mania 
for record-breaking, — we get to thinking more 
of statistics than of manliness, more of the re- 
lations of our work than of the work itself. 
When a man is to be chosen for office, we look 
around not for the wisest statesman and the 
noblest Christian, but for the politician who 
can roll up an unprecedented majority. In 
selecting a plan for a vessel, the steamship 
company does not pay half so much attention 
to the comfort and safety of her future pas- 
sengers as to the lines and construction which 
may diminish time a few minutes and give 
the ship a temporary record-breaking fame. 



WORKING TO BREAK THE RECORD. 41 

In choosing his writers and the subjects they 
are to treat, the average magazine editor has 
no thought for the effect upon the national 
literature and the national morals, but con- 
siders only or chiefly the probable totals of the 
subscription-books. 

Does any one pretend that, for instance, this 
ceaseless breaking of the record in horse-rac- 
ing is all to improve the breed of horses ? Are 
modern racing horses a whit more serviceable 
than the old two-forties ; or were these, in fact, 
of more use than plain Dobbin who never car- 
ried a jockey on his back ? Does the great 
Panoramic Monthly Universe, with its half- 
million of subscribers and its yard-long list of 
" eminent writers " and " popular features," 
elevate perceptibly our American literature 
and life ? Oh, yes ; record-breakers always 
make money. But let them not make also the 
audacious pretence that they are improving 
character. 

My dear young man or woman, I warn you 
that if you care to make any worthy record 
for yourself you must refrain from all thought 
of breaking the record of some one else. A 
record-smasher's record is sure to be smashed 
in its turn, but independent, original, manly, 
and modest work stands firm for ages of 
ages. 



CHAPTER IX. 

WORKERS THAT CONSUME THEIR OWN 
SMOKE. 




HIS chapter has nothing to do with to- 
bacco smoke. I suppose I may take 
it for granted that my readers have 
nothing to do with it, either, except 
when some foul-mouthed fellow puffs it into 
their faces, and they must hold their breath 
for a block. 

I want to talk, rather, about those dense, 
black, carbon-laden masses of hot air that rush 
out of our chimneys and locomotives, and fall 
to the earth to fill our lungs and befoul our 
dwellings within and without, or else rise into 
the heavens to darken the sun and blacken the 
clouds. In many cities this smoke emission, 
from tugs, factories, furnaces, locomotives, 
dwellings, has become a serious menace to 
public health, as well as an immense public 
discomfort. 

There is scarcely a large city in the world 
that is not anxiously studying the means of re- 
moving, or at least checking, this nuisanoe. 

42 



WORKERS C0NSU3IE THEIR OWN SMOKE. 43 

In some cases it must be done by the adoption 
of brightly burning, almost smokeless, fuel, 
such as coke or anthracite or gas. In other 
cases it must be done by the adoption of va- 
rious devices that burn the carbon dust entirely 
up, before it escapes into the outer air. In 
one way or another it may be done, and every- 
where, nowadays, cities are demanding a re- 
form in this important particular, and are 
making compulsory the use of some contrivance 
for the consumption of smoke on the premises 
where it is made. 

Now I have spoken of this with a purpose 
beyond the merely material aspect. There is 
a spiritual smoke emission, and there should 
be a spiritual smoke consumption. No man ever 
lived so perfectly that he did not allow some 
fragments of his life to float off, black and aim- 
less, useless and hurtful. No man's w r ork was 
ever an absolutely clear flame, all his energies 
utilized in it, concentrated upon it. There's a 
ragged edge to all our endeavors, a residuum of 
unappropriated material. 

For instance, we are about some noble task, 
and are trying so hard to accomplish it that 
we do not regard at all the little, black, im- 
patient words and fretful, preoccupied frowns 
that fly off from the periphery of our task. 
Or, we are lost in thoughtful planning, and by 



44 HOW TO WORK. 

our very thought we are rendered so thought- 
less of our immediate duties that black flakes 
of discomfort sprinkle everything about us, 
and even darken the sun. Or, we spend every 
energy upon a single duty, quite heedless of 
other duties, until a long, black column of fail- 
ure caps a very feeble flame. 

These examples, which you can multiply 
indefinitely, are sufficient to show that it is 
just as necessary in the spiritual as in the 
physical world to consume our smoke, to 
guard against leaving on the outskirts of our 
tasks any mischievous remnants that may 
wholly counterbalance the good our tasks may 
accomplish. But how may this spiritual 
smoke be consumed? How may we get to 
doing clean jobs, living completed lives? 

Here also, as in the world of carbon, two 
devices are possible. As the men of chimneys 
conduct the smoke, after it is made, back to 
the furnace, and make it pass again through 
the fire until every grain of carbon is burned 
up, so we may do. We may keep zealous 
watch over ourselves in our work, lay stern 
hands on all escaping bits of passion, fret ful- 
ness, thoughtlessness, overanxiousness, and use 
part of the iiery zeal wherewith we work, to 
burn it up, and purify ourselves from it. That 
is one way. 



WORKERS CONSUME THEIR OWN SMOKE. 45 

But the other method goes to the root of 
the matter : use smokeless coal. There is a 
fuel, wherewith we may feed our lives, that 
does not produce this mischievous residuum of 
annoying side-results. It is a compound fuel, 
made up of the love of God and the love of 
man. This, burning in our lives, gives off no 
smoke, though the least admixture of love of 
self raises a dense cloud. If our lives burn with 
this smokeless fuel, we may direct them to 
whatever tasks we will, sure that our labors, 
seeking solely the happiness of others, will not 
be marred by their discomfort or discredited 
by their hurt. Use smokeless fuel. 




CHAPTER X. 

BATTING, AND DOING THINGS. 

HE great American game ! The game 
which cuts a bigger figure in our 
newspapers (and possibly with right) 
than the great European game of 
war ! The democratic game, around which 
cluster high and low, rich and poor, equally 
enthusiastic, and equally uncomfortable in 
the broiling sun! The game which in the 
eyes of the small boy divides honors with the 
presidency ! Baseball ! 

An old professor of mine, in his youthful 
days, was considered quite a crack player in 
his college nine, and once in a long while, on 
the village green of his native hamlet, he 
swings a bat still to the admiration of the vil- 
lage club, — or are they laughing in their 
sleeves at the old gentleman; who knows? 
It was at a business meeting of this village 
nine, held at the house where I chanced to be 
staying on my annual vacation, that he, hap- 
pening to look in upon the boys, was forced 
to remain; and after the business was com- 

46 



BATTING, AND DOING THINGS. 47 

pleted, and it was finally decided who should 
play first base and who should be left fielder 
and who should pitch, there were vociferous 
calls for " Brownlow ! Professor Brownlow ! " 
and he was compelled to make the following 
little speech : 

" Boys," said he, " I played ball before you 
were born, and I ought to be able to give you 
a few pointers. You get up a good game, 
boys (loud applause), but I have noticed one 
serious defect. You are weak in the battery 
(murmurs of surprise and disapproval). O, I 
know you think that's one of your strong 
points. I suppose the stag is very proud of 
the antler that hangs him. 

" In the first place, every boy of you bats 
for show, and not for the game. You glory 
in 'home runs' and 'three-bagger^,' I know 
how the spectators applaud when they see the 
ball rising so beautifully, high in the air, far 
out into the field. But you lost that last 
game of yours through those sky-scrapers. 
The other fellows did some easy fielding, and 
caught your ' flies ' every time ; while their 
batsmen, on the other hand, sent you hot 
4 liners ' and i ground-scrapers,' and you could 
do nothing with them. They didn't get half 
so much applause, but they got the game. 

" When you are at the bat, fellows, and, for 



48 BOW TO WORK. 

that matter, everywhere in life, you must not 
ask yourself first, ' How can I make a big 
record for myself ? ' but ' How can I put in my 
work so that it will be best for all concerned ? ' 
See whether any one is on first base or not. 
If he is, don't crowd him. If a man is on 
third, bring him in. Make a sacrifice hit. 
Strike at the ball even if it isn't just where 
you want it. Score points for the nine, not 
for yourself. 

" Then, I object to the* position some of you 
take in batting, — just for all the world like the 
attitude assumed by conceited young folks 
when they go out into life. Some of you 
carry your bat away back over your shoulder, 
making it necessary to swing it so far that all 
accuracy of stroke is destroyed. Then how 
you stand, as if you were posing for your pic- 
ture, and wanted the camera to get a front 
view of the big red C on your uniform ! 
1I< re's the way to stand (and with his cane he 
illustrated, amid loud applause). You are all 
ready, you see, to throw your whole weight 
on your left foot, to meet the coming ball. 
Your bat is given enough swing for a good 
momentum, and not too much for accuracy. 
And you strike the ball down, and not danger- 
ously up, ready for the fielders. There's 
nothing fancy about this. It's like a man's 



BATTING, AND DOING THINGS. 49 

wearing his plain business clothes on business 
days. 

" No, boys, I don't want to take the glory 
and the show out of your ball-pla} T ing, or out 
of your lives. It's all right to be pleased with 
applause. Only, wouldn't you a little rather 
have the applause at the end of the game, and 
let the other fellows get it through the first 
innings, if they can ? In life and in baseball, 
boys, those most honored in the long run are 
not the ' highflyers,' not the showy and 
splurgy men, but the judicious, self-sacrificing 
workers, who seek the common welfare, and 
let their own glory come in where it will." 
(Loud applause.) 




CHAPTER XL 

HYPNOTIC LABORERS. 

HERE is always a fairy land of 
science. This fairy land is filled 
with the things we know so little 
about that we say " Pooh ! pooh ! " 
at them. "When we find out about them, we 
say "We always thought so," and then the 
fairies go somewhere else. 

One of these fairy lands just now is that 
sleepy country known as hypnotism. Hypno- 
tism is artificial sleep. In this, just as in 
most kinds of natural sleep, some of the facul- 
ties remain awake, and especially are they 
awake to the bidding of the man who puts the 
patient to sleep. 

Indeed, in hypnotism, the faculties that do 
remain awake are more wide-awake than usual. 
President (i. Stanley Hall, in one of his lec- 
tures, illustrates this finely. Take a long gas 
pipe from which projects fifty lighted jets. 
Then turn out the lights one by one. The 
lights that remain burn all the more brightly, 
until the last jet glares with groat brilliancy. 

50 



HYPNOTIC LABORERS. 51 

So in the case of a mesmerized man, all the 
physical and mental energies seem to flow 
through the single channel that remains open. 
If, at the will of the doctor, he sees, then he 
sees with unwonted intensity and with gro- 
tesque imagination. If he feels, he is conscious 
of pressure that does not exist. If he is bid- 
den to hear, his ear catches strains inaudible 
to all others. His memory is intensified, so 
that he will hold in mind the most complicated 
orders, and even execute them after he has 
waked, and on a distant day. But all this is 
only at the bidding of the hypnotizer. If he 
presents a wisp of paper as a rose, straightway 
it has beauty and fragrance ; but if you or I 
should present a perfect Jacqueminot, the pa- 
tient would neither see it nor smell it. 

And now, my workers, how many of you 
are hypnotized ? You shake your vigorous 
heads, and declare them wide-awake and self- 
commanded. But are you sure ? 

I know scores of men who are spiritually 
and mentally hypnotized. That is, nearly all 
the holes in their pipe of life are choked up, — 
nearly all the natural avenues of activity, — 
and their energy must be exerted hysterically 
and disproportionately through the few out- 
lets "that remain open. Every one-sided man 
is hypnotized. 



52 HOW TO WORK. 

Here's a man asleep on the physical side. 
He has no love for nature, no zest for bodily 
sport, for hearty food, for vigorous living. 
Here's a poor fellow asleep on the spiritual 
side. He knows no Sabbath, owns no closet 
of prayer, fears the dark, and finds it dull to 
be alone. Here's a man mentally hypnotized. 
He is interested in nothing but beetles, or 
Greek roots, or compound fractions. Here's a 
man socially hypnotized. He can see no good 
in artisans, or he has no use for rich folks, or 
he dislikes Germans, or he has an aversion for 
men who wear stovepipe hats. 

Every hobby carries its rider swiftly into the 
dull land of hypnotism. And it's the easiest 
thing in the world to mount a hobby, — much 
easier than for the present writer to mount a 
horse. At first the hobby is a toy horse, and 
slips between youv feet, you scarcely know 
how. But the hobby grows apace. Now he's 
the size of a goat. Now he's a donkey, and 
your feet are just off the ground. Soon he's a 
full-grown horse, and your feet are in the 
stirrups. Speedily he's a camel, and you are 
perched on the loftiest hump. And before 
you know it he's an elephant, and you are 
afraid to get down, if you want to. 

Or, to go back to our first symbol. No 
man who is onesided will confess it, any more 



HYPNOTIC LABORERS. 53 

than the mesmeric patient is conscious of his 
hypnotic condition. Indeed, among my ac- 
quaintances some of the folks who are most 
certain that they are unabridged encyclo- 
paedias are those whose minds do not even 
cover one letter of the alphabet. You see, 
they are using all their energies, and they are 
unconscious that they are pouring them all 
out of the same hole. 

And finally, these spiritually and mentally 
hypnotized folks are not their own masters, 
any more than mesmeric patients are. Some- 
body or something hypnotized them at the 
start. Possibly it was a fascinating teacher, 
to whose " specialty " they gave themselves 
up, body and soul. Possibly it was a book, to 
w r hose ideas they became such stupid and abso- 
lute converts that no other ideas were thence- 
forth admitted to their heads. Possibly it 
was a taste, a fancy, a whim, indulged in 
blindly until it became supreme. Whatever 
it was, the poor fellow is no longer his own, 
but thinks and feels, hears and sees, at the 
mere suggestion of this teacher, or book, or 
taste, or habit of life, all the time believing, 
mind you, that he is his own master, and 
scorning the insinuation that his mind and 
soul are another's. 

O, you poor, deluded, hypnotized, sick folks ! 



54 HOW TO WORK. 

As the doctor slaps his hands smartly before 
the face of the entranced patient, so I would 
wake you up with a sharp exhortation : Be 
men ! Be women ! Do your own thinking ! 
Use all your powers ! Live all over ! Light 
all the jets ! 




CHAPTER XII. 

TAKING HINTS. 

l^]HE successful people are those who 
can take a hint. 

There is a very ancient proverb 
that some people think a quotation 
from the Bible, which runs, A word to the 
wise is sufficient. 

The successful people everywhere are those 
wise folk to whom a word is sufficient. 

A word is all we'll get, anyway, to help us 
toward success, The world is full of hints to 
the hearing ear, the seeing eye, but it has no 
time to preach full sermons. A word here, a 
gesture there, is all it has for us, and if we 
would learn its lessons we must be apt at tak- 
ing hints. 

In the world of business how often this 
truth is illustrated ! Here is a man whose 
stock is always stale, whose methods are al- 
ways antiquated, whose prices are a week be- 
hind the market quotations, whose advertise- 
ments are stereotyped, who never used a tele- 
phone, whose tools were patented before the 

55 



56 HOW TO WORK. 

war, who takes none of his trade papers, 
whose house is mortgaged, brow wrinkled, 
heart discouraged and discontented. 

And at his side, his shop in the same block, 
his farm joining fences, is the business man 
who has been wise enough to discern the signs 
of the times, who has had eyes to see and ears 
to hear the hints the world was giving him, 
whose stock is of the freshest, whose methods 
are of the newest, prices the current prices, 
advertisements piquant and novel, tools of the 
most improved pattern, who keeps the tele- 
phone hot, and devours the papers and books 
pertaining to his business. You all know 
that the last will succeed and the first will 
fail. And the last has had no one to lay 
down a course for him to follow, a system 
for him to pursue. He has succeeded merely 
because he has been able to take a hint from 
all sources. 

In social life here are two young people, 
equally good looking, minds equally brilliant, 
character equally founded on the right, yet 
one will have hosts of friends, be followed 
everywhere by smiles of loving approval, and 
the other will bo a solitary, not so much dis- 
liked as ignored. Nine times out of ten it's 
because one can take a hint and the other can- 
not. One is sensitive to see in a shrug, a 



TAKING HINTS. 57 

frown, the expression of the eye or the tone of 
voice, the disapproval of those around him, 
and shrewd at remedying whatever in himself 
merited their disapproval. The other is blind 
and deaf even to the most plainly expressed 
criticism. One is quick to perceive by expres- 
sion or attitude when others are ill at ease, 
and ready to put them at ease. The other 
has no eyes for others' constraint. One is a 
veritable spiritual thermometer, and knows 
instinctively whether his friends are sad or 
happy, hopeful or despondent, and adapts him- 
self to their needs. The other is blind to the 
little indications of the unhappiness and dis- 
content and joy and longings of his compan- 
ions, and is joyful in their sorrow, and unsym- 
pathetic in their joy, and stolid in their times 
of aspiration, because he cannot read the par- 
able of their faces. And the first will have 
many friends, and the second will go through 
life alone. 

How conspicuous are the examples of this 
principle in the world of study and of science ! 
Bits of wood had been pushed by eastward 
breezes across the mysterious Atlantic for cen- 
turies before the man was born who could 
take the hint and discover a continent. A lit- 
tle girl, the daughter of a Dutch spectacle- 
maker, was playing with her father's lenses, 



58 HOW TO WORK. 

Holding two out before her she cried suddenly, 
" 0, father ! how near the steeple is ! " That 
may have happened many times before, but 
Hans Lippersey was a wise man, and that 
word was enough for him. The telescope was 
made, to do for astronomy what Columbus did 
for geography. To enumerate all examples 
would be almost to detail the history of sci- 
ence, for, from the fall of Sir Isaac Newton's 
apple to the day when that puffing teakettle 
sang of the steam-engine, and down to the 
present decades, when an all but imperceptible 
retarding of an almost invisible point of light 
is made to add a new planet to the system, 
and when a minute shifting of a line of light 
is forced to disclose to us the rate and direc- 
tion of motion of the star which the light left 
years ago, all the triumphs of the human mind 
have been won by its power to read parables, 
to take hints. 

And now may I not, must I not apply all 
this to the life of the Spirit, to the pursuit of 
things highest and noblest for the soul ? Here, 
too, success comes to the man who can take 
hints; who has eyes for the sunlight and the 
sky ; who can interpret the parable of the sea- 
sons ; who can hear with intelligent ears the 
birds' morning hymns; who finds tongues in 
trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in 



TAKING HINTS. 59 

stones ; to whom the sight of the meanest 
flower that grows is sufficient for uplifting to- 
ward the flower's Creator. Success here comes 
to the man who is open to the contagion of 
faith, open to the contagion of cheer, open to 
the contagion of love ; to the man who is able 
to live in others' lives, be strengthened by 
glimpses of their belief, gladdened by a smile 
out of their happiness, comforted and assured 
by a single look which speaks of their love. 
Success in the spiritual life comes to the man 
who can take hints from the past, from his- 
tory, from biography, from written words ; 
the man to whom a saying of Christ's is life- 
food more than brain-food ; to whom a deed 
of a wise and great man is more than a fact, 
— is an inspiration ; whose reading is done 
with his heart in his eyes. And most of all, 
success in the higher life comes to the man 
who can hear God's Spirit speaking to him, 
whose conscience is prompt and sure to con- 
demn and approve what needs blame and 
praise, w^hose will is yielded to God's slightest 
hints of warning or of guidance. 

Busy men of old heard in the midst of their 
toils two words, spoken in that clear voice 
which can never die out of this world, two 
words, " Follow Me." And the two words 
were sufficient, — for the hearers were wise, — 



60 HOW TO WORK, 

and led them into an immortality of useful- 
ness and honor and joy supreme. 

So, from commonplace events, from the 
everyday marvels of the natural world, from 
books, from friends, from the Spirit within 
and above, come promptings daily and hourly, 
"Follow Me," to manhood and womanhood 
and God. We who have ears to hear, let us 
hear. 




CHAPTER XIII. 

HURRY UP! 

E¥ virtues of the worker are more 
needed nowadays than serenity. 

When a long-legged, raw recruit, 
with a stride like a pair of com- 
passes, comes on the parade-ground, it is the 
drill-sergeant's first care to tame the noncon- 
formist's pace to ordinary measure. This he 
does by bidding the novice to walk for two 
hours on an elevated horizontal ladder, whose 
rounds are the due distance apart, and whose 
height from the ground insures careful at- 
tention to the matter in hand — under foot, I 
should say. Graduated from this precarious 
school, the soldier feels on the safe earth in- 
tangible rounds everywhere ; and his step 
has become attuned to the regimental average. 
Even so — for here comes the inevitable simile 
— even so, I fancy, we are set to walking in 
these measured spaces of time, that we may 
learn how to bear ourselves in the portionless 
reaches of eternity. 

Cautiously and sedately must our recruit 

61 



62 HOW TO WORK. 

pace the ladder. It is his apprenticeship to 
the slow-marching dignity of his company. 
He could not run for office on that ladder. 
It is not the fall of stocks that excites a panic 
in his breast. " Corners," " deals," " combines," 
and other speedy ways of "getting there," are 
meaningless to him. Nor would he answer 
pleasantly if told to " hurry up." It is plod, 
plod, plod, and the reward, adoption into the 
resistless, glorious swing of the regiment. 

As I said, possibly our whole life is a ladder- 
drill in leisure. If so, it is a query whether 
those who scorn that discipline here below will 
ever get time, in all eternity, to become ac- 
customed to no-time. Manifestly, our space- 
devouring recruit would not look so ridiculous, 
spoiling the harmonious movement of his com- 
pany, as a man to whom the present day means 
more than a thousand years to come would 
look, if set in a host who have learned to hold 
a millennium as a day. One heavenly spirit 
bidding another " hurry up ! " — the idea seems 
half impious. Yet the earthly existence of 
some very excellent people is summed up in 
those two words. 

"Hurry v/p" when all hurry tends down- 
ward! "Time and tide wait for no man," so 
hurry up, ye heirs ol eternity ! Hurry up 
with your marriage, and down into a leis- 



HUBBY UP! 63 

urely repentance ! Hurry up with an educa- 
tion, and down into mediocrity ! Hurry up 
with your book, and down to oblivion ! 

Probably every one knows about the won- 
derful old fable that tells how Hercules, set- 
ting out on the journey of life, was met at the 
first fork in the road by two beautiful women, 
Vice and Yirtue, each of whom strove to per- 
suade him to go with her. But the fable does 
not tell how, when Hercules had chosen Vir- 
tue, like the sensible old hero that he was, the 
twain came in their travels to a second fork in 
the road, and were accosted by two very hand- 
some men. One, who wore a flashing busi- 
ness suit and had a very jaunty air, advanced 
promptly and said, " I am To-day. If you 
would be successful in life, come with me, and 
hurry up ! " 

The other, whose dress Hercules did not 
note, so simple was it, but whose eyes were ex- 
ceedingly beautiful and penetrating, said 
quietly, " I am called Forever, If you would 
have abiding success, come with me." 

Said To-day with a sneer : " Pay no atten- 
tion to him; he is a visionary. The present 
moment is the only time you dare call your 
own. Live with me, with To-day ! " 

Then Forever answered, " The present 
moment is always dying, but the future is 



64 HOW TO WORK. 

never dead. I can teach 3^011 how to make 
the present alive with the life of the future." 

" That fellow, with his far-off gaze," said 
To-day scornfully, " will make you miss every 
opportunity for immediate profit. Who are 
the millionaires, the merchant princes, the Na- 
poleons of finance ? They are men of the 
times, who live in the day, who grasp their 
chances speedily." 

" Ah, yes," replied Forever with equal 
scorn, u and the gold they heap up is no more 
enduring than coined butter. Is there by the 
side of the dark river any bank that will give 
them a bill of exchange on heaven ? " 

To-day shuddered as he answered, " That's 
the way with Forever. He's always gloomy 
and talking about death. Come with me, 
Hercules, if you want a pleasant, happy life. 
Come, hurry up. Don't stop to think so like 
a dolt." 

Then Forever laughed as he replied, " There 
will come a time, To-day, when your very 
name will be changed to Death, and your 
companions will shrink from you ; but my 
name never changes, and though my comrades 
think me stern and hard at first, before long 
they count it all happiness to live with me." 

To-day interrupted impatiently: "This For- 
ever, Hercules, is one of the most impracti- 



HURRY UP! 65 

cable creatures imaginable. He would have 
you take a course in the fine arts, to improve 
your mind. I would send you to some man 
of business, and set you to work at once. He 
would have you studyjiistory before entering 
politics, but I would have you join yourself 
immediately to a man who knows how to get 
votes." 

Then Forever interrupted in his turn : 
" You are strong, Hercules. Eemember how 
you became strong. Was it not by making 
every day serve the future ? Was it not by 
enduring immediate pain and hardship, and by 
eating only the plainest food, always looking 
not to the muscle and vigor and pleasure of the 
day, but to what you expected as the result 
of the day's privations ? And was not that 
the most practical way of becoming strong, 
clear Hercules ? " 

Hereupon To-day set up a tremendous 
clamor. " Time flies, Hercules ! Make hay 
while the sun shines ! Every moment you 
delay here is worth a dollar ! The present 
calls you, to make money, to win applause, to 
gain power. Be bold and business-like. The 
world is his who hustles. Come, hurry up ! " 

But by this time Hercules had made up his 
mind, and clasping hands with Forever, said, 
" I will go with you, dear master. For I think 



66 HOW TO WORK. 

you will give me all that To-day offers, and 
very much more." 

And so it happened that through all these 
centuries the world has never forgotten Her- 
cules and the glorious life he lived. 

And now let me lay aside ladder-simile and 
Hercules allegory. The world is made up of 
two sets of people — those that live for the 
fleeting moment, and so must be ever in a 
hurry ; and those that live in the moment for 
all eternity, and so live unfretted lives. 

Once I went to see an exhibition of Gustave 
Dore's pictures. As a boy, I had been fasci- 
nated with the spirited work of this artist as I 
saw it represented in engravings, and I antici- 
pated a rich treat in seeing the glorious 
originals. But, alas! though a few of them 
met my anticipations and were brilliant indeed, 
most of them were only immense sheets of dull 
colors, some of them mere ghosts of pictures 
peering out of a world of black. Dore did not 
use properly made colors, and so his paintings 
scarcely outlasted the life of the artist himself. 

It is said to be thus with the much admired 
work of the great Hungarian painter, Mun- 
kacsy, who painted " Christ before Pilate " and 
"Christ on Calvary." Ho was very fond of 
the use of bitumen, which imparts exceeding 
richness to pictures, but must be used with 



HURRY UP! 67 

great caution or it will turn the painting 
black. But Munkacsy used it lavishly, and 
some of his most valued works are already al- 
most indistinguishable. Of course the knowl- 
edge of this peculiarity has operated to dimin- 
ish greatly the prices paid for his paintings. 

But Dore and Munkacsy and other careless 
artists are not the only ones that use perishing 
pigments. Many an ambitious youth is doing 
the same with his life. He would be rich in a 
hurry. He has no time to complete his school- 
ing. He plunges into trade from the grammar 
school or the high school, rises for a while, and 
then, when it is too late, finds himself rapidly 
passed in the race by the wiser boys that took 
time to make ready. Or, he would shine as a 
scholar, but scorns the years of toil necessary 
to make himself master of what has already 
been wrought in his chosen field. He puts out 
a piece of flash writing or crude speculation, 
that wins a temporary success, but is speedily 
forgotten, having merely served to stamp him 
as a hopeless mediocre. 

Or, there is the rich man who has so devoted 
himself to money -get ting that he has lost the 
power of enjoying his wealth after he gets it. 
There is the young married man, who, after 
winning the object of his choice, finds himself 
too busy to take satisfaction in his home. 



68 HOW TO WORK. 

There is Martha, so fuming over household 
tasks, needlessly magnified, that she has no 
time for her Saviour. There is the young 
pianist, who has practised so ardently as to 
lame his hand for life, and the young teacher, 
who has studied so hard without exercise as 
to break down in the first good position. Yes, 
the world is full of these lives that are painted 
with bitumen. 

festina lente, make haste slowly. There 
is no surer way to waste time than to hurry 
too fast. Certainly the Creator knows how to 
get things done, and with what superb se- 
renity and masterly leisure He proceeds about 
all His tasks ! His paintings endure, every 
one of them. His pigments never fade. And 
as we become His apprentices, and dip our 
brushes into His patience and His peace, marvel- 
lous colors will begin to glow on the canvas of 
our lives, colors that not all the sunlight of 
time will obliterate. 

1 often see the expressive word, " Hush ! " 
hastily scrawled on commissions of all kinds. 
Now it is written on a drawing sent to an en- 
graver's, and the finished engraving, that a 
few years ago would have been the proud work 
of a week' or a month, must be in the art edi- 
tor's hands the next day. Sometimes these 

imperative Four Letters are written on a proof- 



HURRY UP! 69 

sheet that accompanies a page of type sent to 
the foundry, and then they mean that even 
electricity must put its best foot foremost, and 
complete the electrotype within half a day. 
Sometimes the order for an edition of a book 
is thus emphasized, and then it means that a 
volume which not many decades ago an entire 
printing establishment would have required 
months to turn out, must be in the hands of 
the readers within a week. 

It sometimes seems to me that I can read 
this word everywhere, " Kush ! Kush ! Eush ! " 
on the electric cars, instead of the street signs ; 
on office doors, instead of the familiar " Push " 
and " Pull " ; on the faces of the hurrying 
crowds that scramble along our sidewalks ; on 
the front of railway stations ; nay, that I can 
even hear the word now and then in the bells 
of certain churches ! Could a more appro- 
priate word be found to emblazon on this cen- 
tury's escutcheon ? 

Now, most of this is wrong. Of course 
emergencies will arise when the utmost speed 
is necessary, but they are not half so frequent 
as we think they are ; and at least half of the 
emergencies that at the time are necessities 
would not have been so, had proper fore- 
thought been exercised. 

But we do not plan for restful lives, lives 



70 HOW TO WORK. 

that move without jar or friction. We have 
got into our heads the insane notion that a 
man, to be " smart," must always be in a rush, 
and keep every one else in that condition. 
We have forgotten, if we ever knew, that the 
best workers work, like God, " ohne Hast, ohne 
liast" We try to do more than we can do 
well. We fill every moment so full that it 
has no time to plan for the next moment, let 
alone for the next day. We have not learned 
the immense advantage of the long forward 
look. And so emergencies come upon us un- 
prepared for. And so our lives are worn away 
in the fever of anxiety and fretting, and wear 
out other lives also, that without us might be 
more sensible. 

Young men, young women, abolish from 
your vocabulary the words " rush " and " hurry 
up"! Be modest in the stints you set your- 
selves, be merciful in the stints you set others. 
Get into your lives the leisureliness of the 
eternal years, where there will be time for 
everything, just as there is in a well-ordered 
life on earth, and where no one will ever be 
known to "rush!" A thing is not worth 
hurrying after at all that would not be better 
gained without hurry. It is never worth 
while to live for the day unless at the same 
time we can live for all days. 




CHAPTER XIV. 

KEEPING PENCILS SHAEP. 

; OU can tell a great deal about a man 
by the way he cares for his pencil. 
This article always comes from some 
men's pockets with the neatest imag- 
inable little tip, — just such a tip as the pencil- 
sharpener of an advertisement is pictured as 
putting on the pencil, but never can be induced 
to put on in reality except with the destruction 
of the lead. This pencil tip, in its beautiful 
symmetry and its business-like readiness for 
the next demand, is the despair of most men — 
and of all women, for the majority of us inef- 
ficient mortals chew our pencils into ragged 
ugliness, break the lead, or wear it down to 
the bone, and then slip our clerkly tool into 
our pocket, blissfully unconscious that there 
will ever be a next time when the pencil will 
be in demand. 

A man who always keeps his pencil in good 
order is pretty certain to have some other val- 
uable characteristics. In this little act he 
shows forethought for the future, — a prudence 

71 



72 HOW TO WORK. 

that is likely to extend to greater matters. 
The man whose motto is, " Sufficient unto the 
hour is the pencil point thereof," will, if he 
carries out that notion, spend his salary as rap- 
idly as he gets it, use his strength to the utter- 
most stretch of endurance, and lay in no sup. 
ply for the mental and physical needs of to- 
morrow or next year. 

Whoever keeps his pencils sharp is likely to 
have a proper regard for tools. He will prob- 
ably brush his teeth regularly and thoroughly. 
He may care for his nails, and for the rest of 
that most marvellous of all tools, the human 
hand. His books will not be dog's-eared. His 
axe will have an edge, and his razor will 
shave. 

Moreover, if he cares properly for his pen- 
cil, it is probably because he intends to be 
ready for emergencies. The man that has to 
sharpen his pencil to get lead enough for an 
entry in his memorandum-book will never be 
ready with his tongue to oppose an unworthy 
candidate when he is sprung upon the primary, 
nor prepared with his wits to do the right 
thing in an accident or at a Jire. 

Neatness in pencil, according to my obser- 
vation, is attended by neatness in dress. A 
sloven in any one particular is likely to be a 
sloven in other and in many particulars. More- 



KEEPING PENCILS SHARP. 73 

over, accuracy in pointing a pencil is often ac- 
companied, according to my observation, by 
accuracy in speech and with the pen. And, 
finally, patience has few better exemplifica- 
tions than in the careful and painstaking sharp- 
ening of one of these little cedar sticks. 

From one thing learn all. A man's entire 
character may be read even in his necktie, if 
we have eyes to see. How much more may it 
be read in his lead-pencil ! One sure test of a 
worker is his tools. 




CHAPTER XV. 

FOUR-TRACKED WORKERS. 

HE railroad on which I live made not 
long ago, at great expense, a decided 
improvement. For miles, where they 
had had only two tracks, they added 
two more. The outer tracks are used for the 
through traffic, that moves rapidly, and the 
inner tracks for the local trains, that must stop 
at every station. 

You can see at once what an advantage this 
is. The fast trains are not obliged to choose 
between possible rear collisions or slowing 
down to the time of the locals. Freights can 
move more conveniently ; and when anything 
is the matter with one track, why, there are 
the others to fall back on. 

Now I know people that could with great 
profit take a lesson from this railway. They 
run all their interests on one track, or two at 
the most. They do everything in the same 
way, at the same rate of speed. They delib- 
erate as long over a friendly note as over a let- 
ter to the President. They study as long over 

71 



FOUR-TRACKED WORKERS. 75 

the probable length of the judgeship of Barak 
as over the Ten Commandments. They sharpen 
a pencil as an artist would carve a statue. 

You see what I mean. These are people 
that have no sense of proportion. They are 
equally thorough in everything, and never do 
the important things half as well as they 
should, just because they do the unimportant 
things twice as well as they should. They run 
no express trains, but all their trains are ac- 
commodation. 

If these folks, now, had only four tracks to 
their lives, what a difference it would make ! 
They would see that here is a matter whose 
value consists, not in its being done precisely 
as well as with time and the quiet use of all 
our powers we might be able to do it, but in 
being done quickly. They would put such 
things on the express tracks. They would see 
other matters that require deliberation and 
plodding painstaking. They would place these 
on the accommodation trains. 

This is no slight matter. More and more in 
this whirling world success is won by those 
that know something about relative values, — 
what books to skim and what to read care- 
fully, what speeches to write out and com- 
mit to memory and what to make off- 
hand, what bits of work to do only as well as 



76 HOW TO WORK. 

the need requires and what to make master- 
pieces. 

" Get a move on you," is one of the most ex- 
pressive of the slang phrases of the day, — so 
expressive that I regret that it is slang. Pos- 
sibly it will not be slang if I paraphase it to 
read, " Get several different moves on you." 
In other words, " Live four-tracked lives." 

" But how about Solomon ? " some of you 
want to ask. " Did he not tell us to do with 
our might what our hands find to do ? " 

Certainly ; and Solomon, as usual, is correct. 
To say, however, that Solomon in that sen- 
tence meant to urge equal thoroughness in all 
matters is to charge him with the opposite of 
wisdom, and even with a decided lack of com- 
mon sense. Do you suppose Solomon spent as 
much time and thought in writing a letter to 
Hiram, king of Tyre, as in writing Ecclesias- 
tes ? The degree of thoroughness adequate 
for the one would have been very inadequate 
for the other. Do you imagine that he 
thought over as carefully what he was going 
to say at the first audience given the Queen of 
Sheba at the dedication of the temple ? 

No. Solomon would never have gained the 
world's love and admiration for his wisdom 
if lie had not known how to divide his time 
fitly among his duties, assigning to each 



FOUR-TRACKED WORKERS. 77 

their proper proportion of thought and atten- 
tion. 

"Do with your might what your hands find 
to do," he urged, and most wisely. Put your 
whole soul into everything you undertake. 
Do everything well, and with enthusiasm. 
But — and this is the point — don't do anything 
too well ; don't put so much of your time and 
energy into one thing that no time and 
energy, or insufficient time and energy, are 
left for matters which God would rather you 
would do. To make a crate as carefully as 
you would make a parlor cabinet is not thor- 
oughness, but wastefulness. 

If you could realize how many " thorough " 
business men have no time to go to prayer 
meeting, how many " thorough " letter- writers 
have no time for reading their Bibles, how 
many " thorough " housekeepers have no time 
for the games and the merry cheer that would 
soften and gladden and enrich their children's 
lives and bind them forevermore to home — if 
you could realize what crimes against God and 
man are daily committed under cover of this 
false thoroughness, you would eagerly join in 
my protest against it. 

Be thorough in everything, — yes, I can even 
put it that way, — but recognize always vari- 
ous degrees of thoroughness, and give to each 



78 HOW TO WORK. 

pleasure and each task just the thoroughness 
that will keep it in its right relation to other 
pleasures and tasks, and you will be a thor- 
ough workman who needs not to be ashamed. 




CHAPTER XVI. 

GETTING-READY DAYS AND FINISHING DAYS. 

^|VERY worker, doubtless, is sadly 
conscious that with respect to work 
there are two classes of days. On 
the first kind of day everything 
slips along as easily as a toboggan going down 
the slide. On the second kind of day every- 
thing gets sidetracked. At the close of days 
of the first kind you can reckon up a long list 
of accomplishments, and your immortal head 
collides with the stars. At the close of days 
of the second class you sorrowfully and igno- 
miniously ask yourself, "What have I 
done to-day, anyway ? " and echo answers, 
"What?" 

Yet on the second days you are just as busy 
as on the first, only — you don't seem to do 
anything. It is like trying to go upstairs in a 
dream. It is like attempting to climb to the 
top of a tread mill. It gives you a sort of 
eerie feeling, when you stop to think of 
it. Are you bewitched? Or are things 
bewitched ? 

79 



80 HOW TO WORK. 

In reality it is neither. In reality probably 
you have been accomplishing just as much on 
one day as on another ; that is, if you are a 
good worker. It will save you much needless 
depression, and the lack of efficiency that de- 
pression brings with it, if you will recognize 
two classes of days, equally necessary, equally 
fruitful, but far from equal in the show they 
make, — namely, getting-ready days and finish- 
ing days. 

On the getting-ready days you hunt up your 
material ; on the finishing days you write 
your article. On the getting-ready days you 
do your shopping ; on the finishing days j^ou 
make your dress. On the getting-ready days 
you straighten things out ; on the finishing 
days you bring in the new sofa. More work 
is likely to be done on the getting-ready days 
than on the finishing days, but it is hidden 
under ground, like the foundation of a house. 
Did you ever know that builders consider a 
house half built when a good level foundation 
is laid ? And yet people who look on, date 
the beginning of the building from the first 
course laid on the foundation. 

And the point of application is, that we 
ouo-lit to distribute over the getting-ready 
days the sal isfaction — or most of it — that at- 
tends the finishing days. We ought to recog- 



GETTING-READY DAY AND FINISHING DAY. 81 

nize the foundation work as genuine accom- 
plishment. Rightly considered, everything 
finished is only the beginning of something 
else, and all beginnings, as far as they go, are 
finished achievements. And to a worker 
who is under God's direction, and seeking 
only to do His will day by day, whether in 
the cellar or on the house-tops, getting-ready 
days and finishing days will be equally happy 
and equally successful. 




CHAPTER XVII. 

BUCKLING DOWN TO WORK. 

^UBTLESS your friends heard you 
say, " Now I mean to buckle down 
to work," but doubtless also they 
have often watched you after this 
so-called buckling down, and have seen that 
you didn't even fasten yourself to your work 
with a double bow-knot, — nothing but a slip- 
knot, and a very poor one at that. 

The virtue of a buckle is that by means of 
it you can get right tight hold of a thing, and 
keep tight hold. To a buckle there are three 
parts. In the first place there is a strap, 
which gives the buckle a long reach ; then 
there is a frame, whereby the buckle gets a 
leverage ; and finally there is a tongue or 
catch, whereby the buckle retains its hold on 
all that the strap gathers in through the lever- 
age of the frame. 

Now all this is a part of the parable which 
you unconsciously use when you declare that 
you mean to buckle down to your work. The 
strap of this work-buckle is the understanding 

R3 



BUCKLING DOWN TO WORK. 83 

of your work, which reaches all around it, 
and gives you a grasp on all sides of it. 
You can't buckle down to work if you know 
only the top of it. No buckle will hold on a 
task if you are acquainted with only one side 
of the task. No half-way man, no one-sided 
man, can in any real sense buckle down to his 
work, though, in good sooth, he can easily 
enough pretend to. The first third, then, of 
this operation of buckling down to one's work, 
consists in the application of the strap, the 
getting some all-round comprehension of the 
work and its requirements. 

The second third is the frame. It is the 
spiritual leverage or purchasing power on the 
work. No one can buckle down to a task with- 
out will power, a bull-dog determination to do 
the work, come what may. The man of weak 
will throws off his coat, rolls up his sleeves, 
grits his teeth, and then — sits down in the 
shade to think about his work. The frame- 
work of the buckle doesn't say anything. It 
lets the bundle that is being grasped do the 
talking and the groaning, while it squeezes it. 
Thus the worker who buckles down to his 
work quietly goes ahead with persistent deter- 
mination, and the work some way goes ahead 
with him. 

But, after all, important as the grasp of the 



84 HOW TO WORK. 

strap and the leverage of the frame may be, it 
is the catch of the buckle that holds. Without 
that, however the strap may be tied and 
twisted, however stout the frame may be, the 
best buckle in the world is worthless. This 
tongue of the work-buckle is the tongue of 
prayer, whereby your strength is stayed by 
God's strength. In that case alone there is no 
slipping. In that case alone the widest reach 
of the most comprehensive purpose will hold 
good. In that case alone the firmest purchase 
of the most dogged will has no chance of los- 
ing what it gains. 

The next time you promise yourself to 
buckle down to your task, bear in mind, then, 
these three factors of the metaphor ; and while 
you look on all sides of your work, and while 
you go at your task with vigor and energy, do 
not forget the little tongue of prayer that is to 
make it all taut and permanent. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



" CAN " CONQUERS. 




T is said that Henry Ward Beecher 
considered that the best lesson he 
ever learned, he learned at school in 
the following way. He was sent to 
the board to do an example in arithmetic. 
When he had finished, the master looked at it 
and said, " Henry, you may do it again." 

Henry did it again ; but as before the 
teacher, after glancing at it, merely remarked, 
"Henry, you may do it again." 

" I think it is right, sir," said the boy, " but 
I will try it once more." 

The third time he tried it, and the third time 
the teacher merely said, " Henry, you may do 
it again." 

" Why," said young Beecher, " the answer 
is right ; I know it is right." 

" Yes," replied the master, " it has been right 
all the time, but you did not know it was. 
Nothing is right to you until you know that it 
is right." 

85 



86 HOW TO WORK. 

Much of the discipline of life is simply to 
teach us confidence in ourselves. We could 
save ourselves much of that discipline by rec- 
ognizing our own powers, and adhering more 
faithfully to the truths God gives us. It is a 
great folly to be conceited and obstinate, but 
probably more young men are in danger of 
distrusting their own thoughts and methods, 
especially when they see that adherence to 
them puts them in the minority and makes 
them a laughing-stock. I* Go back to your 
slate and your A B 0," says the world to many 
an enterprising toiler; but the true worker, 
like Beecher the abolitionist, knows when he is 
right, and goes ahead from the decisive start- 
ing-point of that decision. 

So much, in work, depends on the " state of 
mind " in which the worker is. 

" It is just the way you feel," said the man 
in front of me in the car. "Now some days I 
know I won't make a strike " — they were evi- 
dently talking about bowling — "a strike or 
even a spare; and I don't. And then again, 
other days — don't you know ? — I can feel it in 
my bones that I am going to hit 'em just right, 
and the ball spins right down the centre and 
knocks 'em every time. Why, I can tell be- 
fore the ball leaves my hand whether it's going 
right or wrong. It's funny, isn't it? But I 



"CAN" CONQUERS. 87 

can." There was more of it, much more of it, 
for he was one of the men that say a thing 
over several times in as many different ways 
as they can think of ; but he didn't say any- 
thing else. 

What he had said, though, was enough to 
set me to thinking. Isn't it true of the great 
game of life, as it certainly is true of bowling, 
that the man who feels he is going to fail gen- 
erally justifies his feelings, while the man who 
is confident of success comes out the champion ? 
There are exceptions to all rules, but do we al- 
ways realize how much of the battle is the 
spirit in which we enter it ? 

Skill counts ; of course it does. No amount 
of confidence will gain a victory for a wretched 
bowler against a crack player. But when two 
are evenly matched, have you any doubt which 
will win, the one that believes in himself, or 
the one that distrusts himself ? 

A spent bullet, that will nestle harmlessly 
against a soldier's shirt, will nevertheless so 
stun him by the force of its impact that he 
must be carried from the field. A cannon-ball 
was once rolling quietly along the ground, 
seemingly ready to stop. A soldier tried to 
check it with his foot, and it broke his leg. 
Motion has in it a terrible power. Simply to 
be set going, and then to keep on going, will 



88 HOW TO WORK. 

transform any dull block of stone or metal into 
a mighty engine. 

There are some men that have caught the 
knack of this. " I never have failed," often 
says a young man we know, " and I do not 
propose to fail this time." Thus he gathers 
up all his past successes into a present momen- 
tum ; and thus Emerson's noble line has be- 
come true of him, " His heart is the throne of 
will." 

But — and this, alas ! Emerson did not see — 
the young man's heart is the throne of will 
only because Christ is enthroned there. " I 
can do all things through Christ who strength- 
ened me," is the young man's favorite motto, 
and in that sign he conquers. 

In this way Christian confidence is recon- 
cilable with Christian humility ; for it is the 
Christian's duty to be confident, but it is his 
ruin to be ^//-confident. Momentum is al- 
ways something impressed on matter from the 
outside ; no cannon-ball can set itself to rush- 
ing through the air. " Do you expect to make 
any impression on the vast Chinese Empire ? " 
they asked Morrison, the pioneer missionary to 
China. " No," was the grand reply, " but I 
expect that God will." And so was put in 
motion a cannon-ball that will yet batter down 
the great Chinese wall. The more we get of 



"CAN" CONQUERS. 89 

God's spirit and power, — the more, in other 
words, God becomes ourselves, — the more we 
have a right to trust ourselves. "When God is 
within, to trust ourselves is, in a true sense, to 
dishonor God. 

" I can," then, must be our motto, brother 
workers, sister workers, and we dare let no 
weaker words pass our lips. The taps of a 
cork hammer, repeated regularly and long 
enough, will set to swinging an enormous 
mass of iron. Store up your little successes 
Avon through Christ, and soon their accumu- 
lated momentum will be irresistible. Do not 
admit for a second the possibility of failure ; 
that would be to lose all you have gained ; for 
the cannon-ball, if it stopped in its course and 
retreated only a sixteenth of an inch, would 
destroy all its momentum as surely as if it re- 
treated a mile. 

" Fear is dead ! Fear is dead ! " cry the 
Hindoos, dancing around the ugly clay image 
of the god ; but some creep within the circle 
and kiss the statue's feet, lest Fear be not al- 
together dead, after all. How often we Chris- 
tians imitate that heathen ceremony ! Let us 
imitate it no longer. Let us advance to what- 
ever work God appoints with the cry upon our 
lips, " God wills it ! God wills it ! " and with 
every step of our onward rush, motion will be 



90 HOW TO WORK. 

changed to momentum, and it will be harder 
to check our progress, and this petty barrier 
and that will be tossed lightly aside, until at 
length, by the continued accretion of small 
victories, we shall have drawn to ourselves His 
power whose name is Victory, and all things 
will be possible to us, because we believe. 




CHAPTER XIX. 

PREPARED TO FAIL. 

MAN that works rightly, then, has a 
right to expect success ; more than 
that, it is his duty to be confident. 
But we must set over against this a 
a complementary truth : the Christian worker 
who is prepared to fail is in a large measure 
prepared to succeed. This is true of no worker 
but a Christian worker. A man of the world 
can have little heart for his toil unless he ex- 
pects to prosper in it. Forecast of failure is 
to him present despair and languor. Expecta- 
tion of success is his necessary spur. It is 
said of the worldly worker that nothing suc- 
ceeds like success. This is not true, even of 
him, but it is true of him that nothing suc- 
ceeds like the expectation of success. This is 
because the zeal of the worldly worker is not 
from within, but from without; born not of 
the work itself, but of the work's reward. 

Now the zeal of Christ's workmen is of the 
Spirit and not of the success, of the work and 
not of the result. His Master is not like the 

91 



92 HOW TO WORK. 

masters of worldlings, that measure approval 
by accomplishment ; but his Master looks on 
the heart. And so it happens that the spirit 
of confidence which in the worldling's under- 
takings is most necessary, is seen by the spirit- 
ually minded man to be actually a peril. 

In Christian work almost everything de- 
pends on throwing the emphasis where it be- 
longs, on pleasing God, just as in worldly work 
it must be thrown, as worldlings think, on 
pleasing men. And nothing is more pleasing 
to God than the zealous surrender of our wills. 
This is far from the abject, inane, Buddhistic 
reduction of humanity to nothingness. It is 
the elevation of humanity, rather, so near to 
God that we will God's will, however it may 
cross our lower desires. 

And this is the last grace the Christian 
worker wins, his crowning glory. When he 
begins to work for Christ the results he seeks 
seem so necessary and noble that the collapse 
of the universe must follow his failure. After 
long trial and many tears and much rebellious 
doubting of God's providence, he begins to see 
that God fulfills Himself in many ways, and in 
ways too vast for his comprehension. Upon 
the ruin of his labor God serenely builds more 
grandly than he had planned. His human 
failures are cheerily converted into divine sue- 



PREPARED TO FAIL. 93 

cesses. And all this, as he comes to see, is not 
because God wishes exultingly and tantaliz- 
ingiy to prove His own superiority over men, 
but simply because God loves His workmen and 
His work too well to let them spoil each other. 
Blessed be God that He uses us at all ! that 
He grants to us clumsy blunderers a share in 
His vast building. Blessed be God that He 
loves us for our willingness to serve, and not 
for our success in service. Blessed be God 
that He permits us to fail — for Him ! 




CHAPTFE, XX. 

THE SHOEMAKER AND HIS LAST. 

KNOW of a man who, in spite of the 
fact that he receives a good salary, 
insists on doing almost everything 
for which other men hire outside 
help. He runs his own garden, spending more 
for fertilizers than he ever gets from it in veg- 
etables, and putting in his time at hard work 
after office hours, when it should have been put 
in at play. He beats his own carpets, leaving 
half the dust in them, and giving himself such 
a backache that he is fit for nothing at his regu- 
lar work next day. He does his own carpen- 
ter work, botching every job. He mends 
his own pans and kettles, — so that they 
leak almost as badly as ever. He does his 
own plumbing, — until things get into such 
shape that he has to spend twice as much on 
the regular plumber as he would have spent if 
he had called him at first. He doctors his 
children as long as he dares, handing over to 
the physician aggravated cases every time. 
He regrets that he hasn't a shoemaker's outfit, 

94 



THE SHOEMAKER AND HIS LAST. 95 

so that he might imitate his grandfather of 
" the good old days," and cobble the family 
shoes. He prides himself on being able, as he 
expresses it, to " turn his hand to anything," 
and he calmly forgets that the clock he cleaned 
has stopped forever, and the piano he tuned is 
the terror of the neighborhood, and the new 
carpet he put down looks like a bird's-eye view 
of Switzerland. 

The days when men did practically every- 
thing for themselves are passed, and happily 
passed. It is better for men in this, as in other 
respects, that they should not live alone, that 
they should not live unto themselves. When 
each man does his proper work, the work for 
which he has a native skill coupled with an 
adequate training and experience, and calls on 
others to do their proper work for him, 
then all work is done in the shortest time and 
in the best way. The shoe is more neatly 
cobbled, then, and really at less cost. The 
garden brings a profit, then, and the dress fits, 
and the carpet lies smooth and lasts longer. 

Besides, for most men, there is a most im- 
portant side to this question, — their duty to 
their employers. Statute law may not touch 
the case, but what moral law permits a man, 
who has sold his strength and talents to an- 
other for an agreed salary, to spend his 



96 HOW TO WORK. 

strength and talents in ways detrimental to 
the work he has agreed to do ? 

I have seen clerks so sedulous up to mid- 
night in cultivating their musical talents in an 
amateur .orchestra that they could scarcely 
keep their eyes open next day to wait upon 
customers. 

I have seen teachers so devoted to their 
flower-garden that they gave far more atten- 
tion to their tulips and their roses than to 
their boys and girls. 

I have seen preachers — I would not call 
them by the sacred name of ministers — more 
bent on bicycling than on the saving of souls. 

Workers, you cannot improve Paul's motto : 
" This one thing I do." You cannot afford 
to spread yourselves over more ground than 
Paul. This advice does not preclude doing 
many things. Work to the top of your 
powers, and you will not be likely to work in 
half as many difficult ways as that mighty 
apostle, missionary, preacher, evangelist, 
scholar, traveller, writer, and tent-maker. 
The advice does require, however, that all 
your diversified occupations have a common 
centre and aim. That aim, for you, as for 
Paul, is the work, whatever it is, that God 
has given you to do. 

About this let all things cluster. To tin's 



THE SHOEMAKER AND HIS LAST. 97 

let all things minister. To do it best you 
must play, but play only enough to do it best. 
To do it best you must mingle socially with 
men, but only enough so that you may do it 
best. To do it best you must cultivate your 
musical talents, perhaps, or your talents for 
writing, or speaking, or painting, or cooking 
doughnuts, — but only enough to do it best. 

And this is the only way to keep your life 
from confusion, and fretfulness, and failure. 




CHAPTEE XXL 

A PKIDE IN YOUR WORK. 

T is great fun on "my" railroad, — 
that is, the road enriched by my 
daily twenty cents, to notice the 
different ways the different brake- 
men take of calling out the stations reached, 
or next to be reached. Some will wait till the 
very last minute, when, amid the final jar of 
the cars as the engine slackens its speed, they 
will throw open the door and bawl out, 
" Cogefum," for " Cottage Farm," or " Nunvul " 
for " Newton ville." When the train takes up its 
course again, they slam the door with another 
fierce scream, " Nestay Aundle," which, being 
interpreted, is, " Next station, Auburndale." 

Some brakemen are evidently in the last 
stages of consumption, and feebly whisper 
their announcements. Some are thick-tongued, 
and put unavailing vigor into what might just 
as well be Choctaw. Some drawl out their 
calls as if they were pulling a long rope of 
molasses candy. Some clip off their calls as if 
every word were cayenne pepper. 

98 , - • 



A PRIDE IN YOUR WORK. 99 

There is one brakeman on my road, how- 
ever, who delights my heart whenever I am 
fortunate enough to catch his train. He closes 
the door quietly, advances into the middle of 
the car, and sings out cheerfully and with per- 
fect distinctness, " The next station is Allston." 
This having been accomplished, he retires with 
great dignity. 

Every time this happens, I feel like getting 
up and saying to the young men in the car : 
" Gentlemen, there has just been enacted be- 
fore you a parable of success. That brakeman 
is not afraid to do more than his duty. He 
magnifies his office, and I shall be greatly sur- 
prised if his office does not magnify him. He 
ought to be a conductor right away, and, as 
soon thereafter as possible, superintendent of 
the road. Yes, he ought. He does more than 
the contract calls for. He gives good measure, 
pressed down and running over. He takes 
pride in his work. He rounds off the corners 
and putties up the cracks. Be such a clerk, 
young man, as he is a brakeman, or such a 
typesetter, or bookkeeper, or teacher, or sten- 
ographer, or what not, and success is yours. 
Be ." 

But before that sentence, probably, they 
would have put me off the train. 

LrfC 




CHAPTER XXII. 

EXPENSIVE WORKMEN. 

HERE are some people who, before 
they go on very far in life, discover 
that they are more expensive than 
other folks. Their teeth are of the 
crumbling kind, whose caverns become regular 
gold mines, of the reverse order. Their eyes 
have so many twists that the fullest pocket- 
book gets the cramps trying to fit them with 
glasses. Their tender feet raise a corn on 
every toe as a red flag of rebellion against 
leather that is not of the finest and shoes that 
are not of the shrewdest make. 

O, they are to be pitied, these expensive 
folk ! Ordinary, cheap food is poison to their 
unreasonable stomachs. Ready-made, cheap 
clothing is offensive to their fastidious taste. 
Their sensitive, accurate ears shrink from any- 
thing but the finest pianos, and violins worth 
many times their weight in gold. A tawdry, 
paper-covered book, with inartistic type, — 
pah ! they'd rather not read at all than read 
that. I 'gly wall-paper drives them out of 

100 



EXPENSIVE WORKMEN. 101 

doors. Ingrain carpets are nettles under their 
feet. Better is a slice of bread at Delmonico's 
than a plate of turkey at Mrs. Smith's board- 
ing-house. Worst of all, their constitutions 
are so delicately adjusted that their work must 
fit them as a glove the finger, must give pre- 
cisely the right surroundings, the right hours, 
the right amount of freedom and leisure, or 
they are unable to work at all. 

And so it happens that where others are 
large and liberal producers, these are chiefly 
consumers. If they are rich, they are idle 
and miserable ; and if they are poor, they 
pose as martyrs at the very toil wherein 
others are singing. In neither case is the 
world the richer for them, either in goods or 
good cheer. They were born to be expensive. 

JSTo, that is not true. God did not create 
them to be expensive. God is not such a 
bungling workman as that would indicate. 
God makes no mistakes. To be sure, He may 
have sent the misshapen eyes and the chalky 
teeth and the dyspeptic stomach and the ten- 
der feet and the delicate sensibilities, — matters 
which are expensive enough ; but He always 
sends far more possibilities of wealth than 
sources of poverty. 

Listen, ye poor myopic, astigmatic, aesthetic, 
dyspeptic, rack-eared, plug-toothed unfortu- 



102 HOW TO WORK. 

nates ! Hear a word of common sense from a 
plain thinker. More can come out of a man 
than ever need go into him. If you are ex- 
pensive above the ordinary, be productive 
above the ordinary. Make up for the gold 
mine stowed away in your teeth by those 
words fitly spoken, that are like apples of gold 
in silver baskets. Pay for your complex and 
costly eye-glasses by using your eyes in some 
unique and valuable fashion. Get as much 
out of your dyspeptic body — in your way — as 
Carlyle got out of his, in his way. Must your 
feet be daintily shod ? Speed them on the 
swifter errands. Are your tastes refined, ac- 
curate, sensitive ? Fall to, with your trained 
love of beauty, and beautify this old world, 
instead of grumbling at it. 

There's a noble work for every one. There's 
a wealth-producing work for every one, — 
wealth of spirit, and wealth of the United 
States mint as well. And let every child of 
God that appropriates largely of God's good 
things bestir himself, with God's help, to pay 
back even more than he takes. No such en- 
deavor can end in failure. 



CHAPTER XXIIL 




PEOPLE THAT MEAN BUSINESS. 

YOUNG friend of mine has lately 
moved from a little country town 
to the great city of Boston. In the 
little country town where he had 
spent his life everything went on in easy, 
humdrum fashion, much the same, day after 
day ; no one ever too busy to stop and chat ; a 
place where it was rather respectable than 
otherwise to have nothing to do, provided one 
paid his debts. " Now," thought that young 
man, "I know something of cities. I have 
seen Chicago and New York and other bus- 
tling, egotistic towns ; but Boston the learned, 
Boston the sedate, will be much like my little 
country village, only bigger." 

Arrived, he found streets more crowded 
than he ever saw streets before ; and crowded 
with men more intent on business than he ever 
saw men before, darting along like confused 
swarms of dodging arrows, each with an air 
which seemed to say, " Keep to your own side 
of the sidewalk. Don't get in my way. I 

103 



104 HOW TO WORK. 

mean business ! " The shades of those quiet 
spirits, Emerson, Hawthorne, Lowell, Long- 
fellow, Alcott, Mann, which he expected to 
see still haunting their old peaceful walks, — 
he saw no room for these calm ghosts. Boston 
was a hive of bees which meant business, not 
a drone among them ; or if drones were there, 
they hid their faces in shame in the depths of 
the hive. 

Well, this young friend of mine, after he 
had got over his surprise, was pleased with it 
all. It was an inspiration to get into a place 
where every one had something to do, and 
was in earnest about doing it. He rather en- 
joyed being hustled to one side by energetic 
men. It gave him energy to shoulder some 
one else out of the way. He was glad to get 
into a place where people meant business. 

But he was not long in Boston before he 
began to modify this opinion. He soon came 
across folks whose business was chiefly brag and 
bustle. They snapped every string. They 
pulled tighter every knot. They burst every 
button. They split every box. They tripped 
over their own feet. They talked so much 
that they said nothing. They did so much 
that they did nothing. And very soon, in 
talking about people that mean business he 
learned to explain that he did not mean the?n. 



PEOPLE THAT MEAN BUSINESS. 105 

Nor was he in Boston much longer without 
still further limiting the phrase. He learned 
that many folks mean business spasmodically. 
To-day there is nothing so fine in all the world 
as the task in which they are engaged. Every 
energy shall be given to it. It deserves a life's 
devotion, and it shall have it. Hip, hip, hooray 
for it ! To-morrow, — yawns, groans, fidgets. 
Things are not so fine as they appeared at 
first. Work is too hard. Pay is inadequate. 
Probably another field would be better. No, 
my young friend from the country soon de- 
cided that these people did not mean busi- 
ness. 

Still later he came across another class of 
business men. These people did seem buried 
in business. They were wrapped up in it as 
in a shroud, so that they walked the streets 
like corpses and rode in the cars as if the cars 
were hearses. They were deaf to all sounds 
but those of their business, and blind to all 
sights except those of their occupations. They 
seemed to mean business in earnest. But my 
young friend soon perceived that all business 
is so closely linked to the world of manifold 
activity around it that no man can comprehend 
his business without some close acquaintance 
with that world. He found that the quickest 
way to kill one's business is to bury one's self 



106 HOW TO WORK. 

in it. And so my young friend had to make 
another exception. 

Yet once more, after still longer acquaint- 
ance with business men, this lad of ours dis- 
covered a fourth spurious class. These folks 
were harder to detect, because they were 
bright and sensible in their business ways, not 
spasmodic, not mere bustle, not buried in busi- 
ness, but wide awake and enterprising. But 
my young friend found out that these people 
meant business only so long as business meant 
gain for them, and ease, and popularity. 
Their business was based on self. It helped 
no one else, designedly, at least. It had no 
ends of common welfare. They were ready 
to drop it like hot coals at any instant when it 
ceased to minister to themselves. These peo- 
ple, my young man concluded, do not really 
mean business. 

But he did find some folks that could not be 
denied the title — the proud title — of business 
men. Who were they ? Do you know of one 
of old who said, "Wist ye not that I must be 
about My Father's business ? " Well, they 
were people like Him. They were calm, 
bright-eyed people, who did not jostle others, 
or knit their brows, or walk the street like 
mummies in their cases. They were deeply 
interested in their work, only it was because 



PEOPLE THAT MEAN BUSINESS. 107 

it was not their work, but their Father's. Be- 
cause it was His, they never worried about it ; 
He would care for His own. But because it 
was His, they put their whole lives heartily 
into it. These people, my friend decided, were 
true business men. They did mean business, 
cheerily, nobly, divinely; because business 
meant so much to them. 




CHAPTER XXIV. 

WHERE TO WORK. 

EW young men, — and nowadays we 
must add " young women," — on 
starting out in their business or pro- 
fessional life, realize the immense 
advantage of beginning at home, especially if 
their home is in a country town or a small 
city. The big, bustling metropolis swims be- 
fore their dazzled eyes as a very paradise of 
opportunity. They read stories of the rapid 
rise of this millionaire or that, stories which 
may be true or not, but which are sure to 
leave out all the discouragements and difficul- 
ties, and which forget to mention the fact 
that since our present millionaires were boys 
the business world has so changed that meth- 
ods which brought them enormous wealth 
might to-day prove but a byway to bankruptcy. 
It is my decided judgment that the young 
man who gets his business training at home 
has a chance for advancement when he goes to 
the city many times greater than the city boy, 
and it is merely because I do not wish just here 

L08 



WHERE TO WORK. 109 

to enter upon another topic that take it for 
granted that he must go to the city at all. To 
be sure, he may spend years on a salary lower 
than his city cousins. He may fret and worry 
over the "slow ways" and the "picayune pol- 
icy " of his country associates in trade. He 
may feel that every week a thousand glorious 
opportunities are slipping by him. But if he 
has the right material in him, if he has a 
clear head and a sound heart, if he possesses 
grit and originality and tact, his apprentice- 
ship in the country or in the small town is 
coining the dollars of his future fortune. 

There he is known; in the city he would be 
unknown. There he is somebody ; in the city 
he would be nobody. There he has the proud 
consciousness — more or less justified — that he 
is well toward the top ; in the city he would 
be discouraged by the enormous mass of 
mortals on top of him. There his originality 
is unfettered ; in the city he must make of his 
life a cog fitting exactly into the great, whirl- 
ing cog-wheel. There he has room and can 
expand naturally ; in the city he can scarcely 
breathe without inhaling second-hand air. 
There everybody takes an interest in him. 
They may insult his dignity by calling him 
Jack, but he is the Jack whose baby form they 
have dangled on their knees, or whose father 



110 HOW TO WORK. 

was their best friend at school. In the city he 
would be "You," or "No. 52," or "That 
Jones." In the country his little successes are 
the property and the pride of the entire com- 
munity. They get into the village paper. 
The small boys point him out. In the city, — 
well, his boarding-house has a rather transient 
population, that's a fact. 

I could keep up this sort of contrast for 
some time, for I am full of the subject ; but 
you see the point. Stay where you are known, 
young men. Get your experience at home. 
It will be good experience. It will come ten- 
fold easier than in the city. It will develop 
in you confidence and a courageous manliness, 
while the city would be crushing all the con- 
fidence out of you and all the good cheer, and 
changing you from a man into that thing 
called a pessimist. And if, after some good, 
solid years of this, you have a fair chance of 
carrying into the city's whirl your freshness 
and your buoyancy and your fine country 
sprightliness and sturdy good sense, they will 
be quoted at par in its markets, never fear. 
For character counts, and courage counts, and 
ability finds a place for itself, and your life, 
through this natural, quiet, simple progress, 
has been building into its structure these three 
supreme qualifications of all success. 



WHERE TO WORK. Ill 

So much for the start ; now a word about 
new situations and when to take them. 

A very noble story is told of President*An- 
derson of Eochester University. He w r as of- 
fered the presidency of Brown University, — a 
most enviable position, and one especially at- 
tractive to him. But he declined it, and on 
quite unusual grounds, for he said : " Go ? 
No, I am going to stand by Eochester. Eoch- 
ester invested in me when I was unknown 
and without value ; if the investment has not 
proved a failure, Eochester deserves the 
profits." 

How many men, helped to start in life, con- 
sider the firm or the institution that has given 
them this start as merely a stepping-stone on 
which they may climb to what they falsely 
think higher things ! They call that " better- 
ing " themselves, when they really, by their 
disregard of the first principles of gratitude 
and honor, have cheapened themselves and 
their eternal life. 

A dealer in paper was talking to me not long 
ago. " I could save to The ," said he, re- 
ferring to one of the leading journals of the 
country, "many thousands of dollars a year if 
they would buy their paper of me rather than of 
the firm with which they are dealing, but they 
will not hear of such a thing. You see, when 



112 HOW TO WORK. 

the owner of The was starting the paper, 

sixty years ago, this paper firm had confidence 
in him, and trusted the young man to any ex- 
tent, though he had no money to pay his paper 
bills for some years. And now do you think 
that any saving would induce the proprietor 

of The to withdraw his patronage from 

that firm ? JSTo, sir ! " 

The right thing for a young man to do when 
tempted to leave the employ of a firm he re- 
spects, and to which he owes his initial chance 
in this world, is first to consider whether there 
is any moral reason why he should not remain 
with that firm all his life, and if there is not, 
to decide to put into his position there so much 
zeal and faithfulness as to make it worth to 
him and the world all that he could hope to 
gain from any position that he could expect to 
open to him elsewhere. 

To make one's position twice as valuable as 
it is now is tenfold better than stepping out 
from it into another position twice as valuable. 
Strike your roots deep, workers, and grow 
where you are. 

And permit me a few remarks, in conclusion, 
on the choice of easy situations. This world 
is full of soft heads looking for soft jobs. 
What is a soft job ? It is one that puts hard 
cash into soft hands. It is one that gives for 



WHERE TO WORK. 113 

the least amount of work the greatest amount 
of pay. A job that jrou can sublet at a big 
profit, a job that offers sure pay for lucky hits, 
a job that calls for one who is good-looking 
rather than good for something, — these are 
soft jobs. Ah, the woods are full of men 
hunting them. 

Now, there are several reasons why I should 
fight shy of such jobs, if I were you, young 
men. In the first place, a soft job is almost 
certain to make a hard heart. No one can 
sympathize with this world's toilers and suffer- 
ers who is not toiling and suffering with them. 
Those that have soft jobs are sure to be snobs. 

In the second place, a soft job means a soft 
brain. Brains are toughened by hard work, 
not by soft work. If you have to bend your 
minds fiercely and constantly upon some 
worthy task, they find in it a philosopher's 
stone to turn them to gold. If you exercise 
your minds upon bubbles, they also become 
gassy. 

But finally, a soft job means hard luck. It 
does, indeed. Keflect that when hard times 
come it is the men with the soft jobs that have 
to go. The men who are giving money's worth 
for money, and they alone, are assured of keep- 
ing their places very long. 

Honest, solid work for honest, unextrava- 



114 HOW TO WORK. 

gant pay, the weary body at night and the 
cheery song in the morning, a little home 
where love dwells, and a hearth aglow with 
contentment, — seek no softer job than that, 
workers, if you want happiness in this world 
and the next. 




CHAPTEK XXV. 

WHAT IS UNDER YOUR HEAD ? 

HAVE an important question to pro- 
pound to every worker. As I ask 
it, you may fancy, if you will, that 
I' am a regular Sphinx, sitting along 
the road named Success in Life, and turning 
off on the gloomy bypath of Disappointment 
every one of you that cannot answer my ques- 
tion satisfactorily. You'd better heed it now, 
as it comes from my harmless self, and be pre- 
pared to make a good answer when you are 
cross-examined, as you surely will be, by the 
Sphinx of This World. 

But I have been rambling on as if you knew 
what the awful question is. I will whisper it. 
Listen : 

What is under your head ? 

What are you laughing at, my giddy read- 
ers? That's a solemn question, I tell you, 
when asked as that Sphinx asks it, with her 
great paw ready to knock you off to one side 
unless you answer it well. 

115 



116 HOW TO WORK. 

But you don't know what the question 
means ? All the worse for you, if you have 
done so little thinking about what is under 
your head that you do not at once catch the 
import of such a query. 

First (as the Sphinx will want to know). Is 
a good pair of lungs under your head ? Brains 
are fine things, with their wise wrinkles and 
sage convolutions ; but brains, after all, are 
dull things without lungs to blow the breath 
of life into them, and keep it there, fresh and 
vigorous. Why, your brain may be as big as 
Cuvier's or Butler's, but if your lungs are as 
shrivelled as some must be, I would no more 
insure your intellectual fame than a life-insur- 
ance company would insure your poor, ill- 
treated body. 

Secondly. Is a good stomach under your 
head? You may laugh, but just wait until 
you try to drive genius and dyspepsia in the 
same harness. Brains and bile are mortal 
foes. If your stomach won't digest food, it 
really doesn't matter how many tons of facts 
your brains will digest. A strong head on a 
weak stomach is about as useful as the Lick 
telescope would be planted on a bobbing buoy. 

Thirdly. Is a good pair of hands under 
your head ? Not hands white and delicately 
formed, though I have no objection in the 



HAT IS UNDER YOUR HEAD? 117 

world to that ; but — what is more to the point 
in connection with your head — hands that are 
shrewd to carry out what the brain is shrewd 
to contrive, busy hands, accurate hands, quick 
hands, ready hands, gentle hands, brave hands, 
— are those under your head? Hands that 
can write down your brain's wise fancies with 
a penmanship clear as print. Hands that can, 
if need be, — and need is likely to be, — help 
your fine brain eke out a livelihood. A brain 
without hands is like a general without staff 
officers. 

Fourthly. Is a good pair of feet under 
your head ? Not feet that are weak and 
clumsy, and smarting with corns, and — pretty 
because the tightly squeezed leather outside is 
pretty, but feet that retain nature's beautiful 
outlines, feet that are on good terms Avith the 
ground, and can press it with loving, easy 
grace, for a happy twenty miles at a time. 
Errand-speeding feet. Dancing, springing, 
merry feet. Feet soft and light in sick-rooms. 
Feet sturdy and swift on the path of duty. 
Are these under your head ? 

O, I know what a masterful thing a head is. 
I -know what mountain-high difficulties it can 
overleap. I know what triumphs a Henry 
Martyn, for instance, can wring out of his 
frail, fever-tortured, cough-racked body, 



118 HOW TO WORK. 

" burning out for God." I know that when 
God chooses to hold up a man's head with 
nothing under it, — or next to nothing, like 
Mahomet's coffin suspended in mid-air by in- 
visible forces, — God can do it. But, just the 
same, He seldom does do it; and it is the 
most impudent presumption to abuse our bod- 
ies in the faith that He will do it. 

Look upon your head, young people, — and 
old, — as the glorious climax of your body ; 
but don't try to build a pyramid out of an 
apex, with no foundation. In one sense, the 
pedestal is as important as the statue that it 
supports. And if your pedestal is crumbling, 
and just ready to totter, stop your chiselling 
away at the statue long enough to build up a 
stout pedestal, else the statue itself, with all its 
growing beauty, will topple in ruin to the 
ground. 




CHAPTER XXVL 

MAKE READY, TAKE AIM ! 

E have gone a long way into our 
work when we have wisely begun it. 
In that delicious book, " The 
Peterkin Papers," Solomon John 
decides to become a great writer. So the 
family hunts up some sheets of paper, manu- 
factures ink from berries, chases a hen and 
makes a quill pen. Paper spread out, new pen 
dipped solemnly in the ink, awed family 
standing in expectancy, Solomon John sud- 
denly discovers that he has nothing to write ! 

How like Solomon John do we often start 
into our w^prk ! We propose to make wonder- 
ful progress. But in what direction? We 
expect to improve. Improve what ? We 
shall reach the goal in triumph. What goal ? 

Would we start on a voyage as we start 
into a day, a month, or a year? No. We 
should have definite aims, know the best ship, 
understand the dangers of the trip, take out 
an accident insurance policy, study the route. 

Do men start thus in business ? No. They 

119 



120 HOW TO WORK. 

take account of their capital, watch their 
risks, study the state of the market, note their 
chances for gain. 

Why, we plunge into most of our work as 
rash boys dive into strange waters — eyes shut, 
hands over heads, and down we go ! No won- 
der that we sometimes bring sharply up against 
stones. 

How the proverbs cry out against us ! 
" Foresight is better than insight." " A stitch 
in time saves nine." " Prevention is better 
than cure." " Well warned is half armed." 

I used to be drilled by a shrewd sergeant, 
one of whose tricks was the command, " Make 
ready — take aim — " and then would come a 
pause, during which some impatient gun would 
be certain to go off. " Vy don't you vinish 
aiming ? " growls the sergeant. 

Take good aim, every day, before you fire 
into your work. Stop right here, &nd think. 
Do you want to begin this day where you be- 
gan last, or where you left off ? If the latter, 
think over the experiences yesterday brought 
you. What did it show to be your special 
temptations? What helps did you find most 
beneficial ? And where are you faulty now ? 
►Select one point for improvement, and only 
one. Do not aim too high, or too low. Do 
not try to do more than you can, or less. 



MAKE READY, TAKE AIM! 121 

Shall it be your temper, your bashfulness, 
your inaccuracy, your slowness ? Whatever 
it be, " make ready, — take a good, long aim, — 
fire ! " 

The brute lives in the moments, a life of 
disconnected dots. So does the brute-like man. 
For him the past has no stimulus and no warn- 
ing, the future no invitation. But the life of 
the wise man is a line, with a purpose in it, 
directed by what lies behind, and aiming well at 
something ahead. Paul forgot the things that 
were behind, he said, and pressed on to things 
that lay before him ; but we can be sure he 
never let go of the past till it had yielded up 
to him its last drop of instruction and blessing. 

How can you teil the ignorant laborer and 
the skilled mechanic ? The first goes about 
his tasks with an air of monotonous plodding, 
one day's work like another's, with no sense 
of possible progress. The second looks eagerly 
at what he has done, with an eye trained to 
note defects and beauties, and a brain quick to 
see how the next piece of work may be free 
from these defects and increase these beauties. 
This last is the only kind of work that grows, 
and work that grows is the only work that 
endures. Aimless repetition of tasks means 
death as much as aimless idleness means it. 
There is such a thing as stagnation in work. 



122 HOW TO WORK. 

God's labor is permanent in its results -be 
cause it looks before and after, is cumulative, 
has its solid foundations and its spires of desire. 
And if we wish our life-work to have any 
measure of the firmness and success of God's 
great works, it must be made, like His, to grow 
with reasonableness out of the past, and look 
with purpose toward the years to come. There 
are no times so appropriate for this wise and 
linking meditation as the beginnings and end- 
ings of things — the start, when purpose has 
action, all fresh and unsullied, before it ; the 
close, when reason has action, with its lessons 
and promptings, behind it. 

And yet, if we are already in the midst of 
affairs upon which we have entered with no 
thought of whether they are a worthy con- 
tinuance of the past and lead toward a worthy 
future, it is best to stop in the midst of things ; 
and as the surveyor stations his instrument be- 
tween the stake just passed and the new one 
to be set, so let our workman consider whether 
his life is in line with the best in his past, and 
with his purest hopes. If not, he can retrace 
his steps with thanksgiving for a great escape. 
If it is, he will plod on with a glad confidence 
that will more than pay for the loss of time. 

Many workers seem afraid thus decisively to 
plan their work. Probably the wittiest of 



MAKE BEADY, TAKE AIM! 123 

all the world's witty proverbs is this, which 
has come to us from the Germans : " The 
road to hell is paved with good intentions." 
In Italy and France and Portugal they have 
it that Satan's realm itself has the same sort 
of paving. Now this is the worst kind of lie 
— a half truth I For though many a person has 
slipped on a shabbily-laid intention-stone and 
fallen, yet we may lay these paving-stones of 
good resolutions so firmly that they will be- 
come for us the very gold of the celestial 
streets. 

For the Chinese are right when they say, 
" Be resolved, and the thing is done ! " Have 
you ever heard that abominable proverb for 
which the Germans, again, are responsible, 
" A bad beginning makes a good ending " ? 
Never believe it, never ! When the Germans 
are wiser they cry, " Beginning and ending 
shake hands ! " Which is about what the 
Dutch saying means : " So begun, so done." 

I do not like the way our common proverbs 
sneer at promises. " Promises are like pie- 
crust, made to be broken." " Promises fill no 
sack." " In the land of promise a man may 
die of hunger." " Fair promises bind fools." 
" A great many shoes are worn out before 
a man does what he says." " Promises and 
undressed cloth are apt to shrink." Four dif- 



124 HOW TO WORK. 

erent nations gave us these ugly maxims, and 
I hope America will never coin such crabbed 
proverbs ! 

No, promises do make progress ; resolutions 
make reform ; good intentions pay good inter- 
est ! " Everything is difficult at first," says 
John Chinaman, and when w r e have to make 
one of these difficult beginnings, of a trade, or 
a lesson, or a year, making a little promise to 
one's self does for the spirit what clinching 
one's teeth does for the body. It doesn't ac- 
complish any of the work, but it braces us, 
and makes us more vigorous for our task. 

Never mind if it does seem hard. Begin, 
any way. " Everything must have a begin- 
ning," say the proverbs of half of Europe, and 
the French and Italians add this noble saying : 
" For a web begun, God sends thread." Be- 
gin, that you may know with surprise and 
pleasure the truth of the words which the old 
Greek farmer-poet Hesiod once wrote, and 
which have become a proverb of all lands : 
" The beginning is half the whole." 

Two cautions. Make no promise carelessly. 
Remember the proverb, "He who resolves 
suddenly, repents at leisure." Heed these wise 
words of stout Warwick: "I will forethink 
what 1 will promise, that I may promise but 
what I will do." 



MAKE BEADY, TAKE AIM! 125 

And resolve few things. " Who begins 
much, finishes little," say the Germans and 
Italians. " Promise little, and do much." 

Most of all, if your paving-stones are not 
to lead you the wrong way, repeat to yourself 
the French proverb, " He is not done who is 
beginning." "Everything new is beautiful," 
remark the Italians, while the Germans add 
sarcastically, " The beginning and the end are 
seldom alike." Now " it is good to begin well, 
but better to end well." " The end crowns 
the work." Do not forget that. 

So let us, as the Scotch say, " set a stout 
heart to a steep hillside." Practice the Chinese 
teaching, " Resolution is independent of age, 
but without it one lives a hundred years in 
vain." And heed the German warning, " He 
who does not improve to-day, will grow worse 
to-morrow." 




CHAPTER XXVIL 

HEAPING IT ON. 

KNOW many overworked men. 
People come to them, begging them 
to make speeches, lead meetings, at- 
tend meetings, be on committees, 
and do numberless such jobs, and when they 
say, " I have already more work than I ought 
to do, and you really must excuse me," the 
faces of the pleaders light up with a sudden 
inspiration, — it is always the same smile, and 
you may always know just what is coming, — 
and they always say, " Why, if you had noth- 
ing to do I should not want you, but it is the 
people who are busiest that find most time to 
do things." And then they look for an in- 
stant capitulation. 

I have heard that statement made so many, 
many times that I am moved to expostulate. 
Why should the work a man is doing be con- 
sidered a warrant for putting more work upon 
him ? Why should his compliance once, sub- 
ject him to ceaseless requests that continue 
until lie is driven into nervous prostration, or 
until he gets mad ? 

12(> 



HEAPING IT ON. 127 

We don-t treat the beasts in that way. 
When a horse has all he ought to pull, a driver 
does not say, " Now this horse has proved that 
he will pull. Let us heap on a ton more." 

We don't treat in that way even the insen- 
sate earth. We don't fill our garden with 
twice as much seed as it ought to contain, and 
say, " If this were not good soil, I should not 
be putting my seeds in it ;but ground that has 
done the most, can always find strength to do 
more." 

No ; we believe in rest — for horses. We 
believe in fallow seasons — for soil. But for 
men we say, " The busiest man is the one to go 
to, if you want anything done." 

Now, that is shrewd. The man who is hard 
at work all his life knows, of course, how to 
work well and quickly. When we have a job 
we naturally take it to the best workman. 

Besides, "noblesse oblige" ; it is God who 
has given the workman his power to work, and 
God requires that the workman shall use his 
power to the best advantage. To a certain 
extent we are working with God when we 
show a good workman a chance for some use- 
ful service. 

But, with all due regard for both these con- 
siderations, let us remember that we are our 
brothers' keepers, — keepers of our brothers' 



128 HOW TO WORK. 

health as well as keepers of our brothers' souls. 
Before we even suggest any fresh tasks to a 
hard-working man, it is our duty to consider 
first whether he has not already as much as 
we have any right to expect him to do. 

But why cannot the man himself refuse, if 
he really has not time ? In the first place, a 
hard-working man is always good-natured. 
Then, too, such a man is almost certain to 
overestimate his strength. Besides, it is a 
very disagreeable thing to do, this constantly 
refusing requests to help in good works, es- 
pecially when each of the requests asks for 
some quite little thing, though altogether they 
amount to a heavy undertaking. Such con- 
stant refusals hurt a man's temper, spoil his 
self-respect, and injure the work he is doing. 

No. Be solicitous, if you will, that the lazy 
people get their fair amount of work. Set 
them to leading meetings. Appoint them on 
committees. Appeal to them in emergencies 
in your business life, your church work, your 
social work. Seek to equalize burdens, if you 
will. Take them off the backs that are heaped 
up mountain high, and put some of them on 
the backs that are now going scot-free. But 
never, never say, u That man is bravely bearing 
a noble load. Go to; let us put a straw upon 
it." 




CHAPTER XXVIII. 

TIME, THE WORKER'S GOLD MINE. . 

UPPOSE that as, one by one, you 
came to need your hours, each were 
brought to you, a shining substance 
wrapped in finest silk, borne by a 
glittering angel ! Suppose that, if the angel 
delayed, you would lapse into unconsciousness, 
and if he tarried too long, you would pass out 
into death. How } r ou would value time ! How 
grateful you would be for its unfailing regu- 
larity, for the lavish fullness of the royal gift ! 
And if, at the close of each day, some angel 
should spread out before you a great book 
wherein had been written, with ink that could 
not fade, opposite each minute given you that 
day, the use you had made of it, how careful 
you would be in your expenditure of that 
priceless doAver — time ! 

God does not send angels with hours wrapped 
in silk ; He does better than that. With His 
own kind, invisible hand, He pours them out 
for you Himself. No such book as I have im- 
agined exists, but a book more startling ; for 

129 



130 HOW TO WORK. 

your use of every instant of time is written 
down in the body you carry around with you. 
The way your fingers move is a chapter of 
your life history. The quality of your glance 
is a compact account of many an hour. Your 
bearing, the tone of your voice, the color of 
your skin, the curve of your mouth, all these 
are epitomes of your time. 

If this is true, it should be to every soul a 
most solemn question, " What am I doing with 
this sacred gift ? " The answer to this ques- 
tion will fairly determine your life. As that 
great man, William Ewart Gladstone, once 
said, " Thrift of time will repay you with a 
usury of profit beyond your most sanguine 
dreams, and the waste of it will make you 
dwindle, alike in intellectual and in moral 
stature, beyond your darkest reckonings." 

Out of the same bit of meat an eagle will 
organize swiftness, and a snail, slowness ; a 
lion, fierceness ; a snake, treachery ; and a dog, 
affection. So out of the same time some men 
will build failures, and others, successes. 

When Joseph Cook Avas in the seminary, the 
boys often had to wait for dinner at their 
boarding-house. He always spent that little 
time over a dictionary in the corner of the 
room. Dickens was able to accomplish so 
much because, when he worked, he labored in- 



TIME, THE WORKER'S GOLD MINE. 131 

tensely, and when he played, he played with 
all his heart. We admit to our lives too many 
neutral moments of time, moments when we 
are doing nothing in particular, and those neu- 
tral moments color the others. 

Our American manufacturers are acknowl- 
edged to succeed largely because of their at- 
tention to the by-products, the so-called waste 
material. That has been the secret of all suc- 
cessful lives ; they have recognized the supreme 
importance of five minutes. The time you 
waste in railroad stations, on the cars, at your 
dressing, over your newspaper, waiting in bar- 
ber-shops, and the like, would serve, if you 
kept a wise book ready to your hand, to ren- 
der you a learned man. Ten minutes wasted 
every day means, in a working life of fifty 
years, an entire year of 350 days, with eight 
working hours to each. " There is a time," 
says the Bible, "to every purpose under the 
heaven," but no time for the purposeless. The 
same young woman that can find no time for 
Euskin has ample time for Conan Doyle. 

It is when we come to take this large look 
over time, that our use of it appears in its most 
serious aspect. When we come to understand 
even a little of what eternity means, and of 
how intimately it is bound up with the passing 
minute, we see how well it must pay to treat 



132 HOW TO WORK. 

God generously with the time He gives us. To 
say, in effect, that we are so busy that we 
have no time for our Father's business, — no 
time for our Bible or for the quiet hour, no time 
for the Christian Endeavor topic or the Sunday- 
school lesson or church-work, — is to condemn 
ourselves as the most shortsighted of creatures. 
It would be appropriate to quote here a 
rhyme I once wrote, which the editor of 
Harper's Weekly was kind enough to print : 

11 There was an old fellow who never had time 
For a fresh morning look at the Volume sublime ; 
Who never had time for the soft hand of prayer 
To smooth out the wrinkles of labor and care ; 
Who could not find time for that service most sweet 
At the altar of home where the dear ones all meet ; 
And never found time with the people of God 
To learn the good way that the fathers have trod ; 

But he found time to die ; 
O yes ! 

He found time to die. 

This busy old fellow, too busy was he 

To Linger at breakfast, at dinner or tea, 

For the merry .small chatter of children and wife, 

But led in his marriage a bachelor life. 

Too busy lor kisses, too busy for play, 

No time to be loving, no time to be gay, 

No time to replenish his vanishing health, 

No time to enjoy his swift gathering wealth, 

J in t lie found time to die ; 
( ) .\ es ! 

He found time to die. 



TIME, THE WORKER'S GOLD MINE. 133 

'This beautiful world had no beauty for him, 
Its colors were black, and its sunshine was dim. 
No leisure for woodland, for river or hill, 
No time in his life just to think and be still, 
No time for his neighbors, no time for his friends, 
No time for those highest immutable ends 
Of the life of a man who is not for a day, 
But, for worse or for better, for ever and aye. 

Yet he found time to die ? 
O yes ! 

He found time to die." 



That is a suggestive phrase we use in re- 
gard to the employment of our odd moments, 
— we say Ave are " putting in time." Putting 
in time ! Putting it in what ? 

Well, in the first place, we put this time into 
the bank of character. Tell me how you em- 
ploy your odd moments, and I will tell you 
whether you are becoming wiser or more igno- 
rant, stronger or weaker, more industrious or 
more slothful. Any bank cashier knows that 
the greater part of the capital of the world 
consists not of the large deposits, but of the 
little accounts of comparatively poor men. It 
is these small accounts, regularly added to, 
that make the backbone of the world's wealth. 
Similarly, it is the little bits of time that make 
the backbone of character. 

These bits of time, when you " put them in," 
are put into your assets of power. The 



134 HOW TO WORK. 

strength of a tree is not gained, much of it, 
at the times when it seems to be doing most, 
putting out leaves, and parading flowers and 
fruits. It builds itself up in bulk and stamina 
during the times when it does not seem to be 
doing much of anything. Nature knows how 
to "put in" the odd moments. She knows 
how to " put in time." If your assets of power 
consist only of what you have gained by oc- 
casional splendid spurts, you are practically 
bankrupt. 

And then, when you " put in time," you put 
it into a permanent fund of satisfaction, pay- 
able on demand. What a joy it is to be able 
to look back upon days and years spent thor- 
oughly well, the chinks all filled with useful 
work and useful play ! I know of no higher 
worldly joy than this, and the joy is not ab- 
sent from heaven, either. 

My dear workers, if you don't " put in 
time," it pulls you out. From what ? And 
into what ? 

From wise thoughtfulness, into silly careless- 
ness. From growing power, into growing weak- 
ness. From happiness, into unrest and discon- 
tent, From wealth and prosperity, into a 
slowly eating loss. 

Watch your account in the great ledger of 
life. It is the littles that make the mickle 



TIME, TEE WORKER'S GOLD MINE. 135 

there, even more truly than elsewhere. Heap 
up a comfortable balance in the bank of char- 
acter, and you can put into your account there 
nothing more valuable than bits of time well 
spent. 

It is very interesting to watch the running 
of express trains on one of our great railways. 
Every energy is put forth and every device 
adopted that will bring the train to its desti- 
nation at the advertised hour. In order that 
the engineer's attention may not be diverted 
from his important task by constant looking 
at his watch, and that possible errors arising 
from the imperfection of a single timepiece 
may be avoided, the engineer on some roads 
is not obliged to look at his watch at all, but, 
as he flies past the frequent stations, men are 
seen standing by the side of the track holding 
up a large dial with plain figures and a mov- 
able hand. On one side the dial simply reads, 
" On time." On the other side the face and 
hands show how many minutes the train is 
late. If the " On time " face is presented to 
the approaching engine, the man at the 
throttle is happy ; but if the other side con- 
fronts him, he must crowd on more steam. 

How very convenient it would be if we were 
favored with such an arrangement at the 
stations of our life ! If we could only know 



136 HOW TO WORK. 

whether we are " on time " for all opportuni- 
ties ; " on time " for God's designs ; " on time " 
for fortune ; "on time" for the well-being of 
our friends ; " on time " for the higher in- 
terests of the kingdom of God ! And if we 
are not " on time," if we could only know just 
how far behind time we are, and how much 
steam we must crowd on to keep up with the 
schedule ! 

But God has not established any such ar- 
rangement. I think I know why. I think it is 
because he wants us to crowd on all steam all 
the time ! I think it is because we are not 
" on time " at any point along the line of His 
purposes unless we get there just as speedily 
as we can ! 




CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE BULLDOG GRIP. 

ROBABLY "The Hoosier School- 
master " is not read so often now- 
adays as formerly, which is a pity, 
for it is a sturdy and a delightful 
book ; and therefore it is likely that few work- 
ers of the present have the inspiration that I 
have gained from that bulldog scene. It was 
a simple enough scene — merely the picture of 
a bulldog getting that grip upon a raccoon 
which never lets go until the 'coon is dead ; 
but it made a' profound impression upon the 
Hoosier schoolmaster as he watched it, the 
spirit of the bulldog got into him, he set his 
teeth, he conquered the refractory school, and 
he won his way through other perils that were 
worse, and all because of the bulldog's jaws. 

You remember the familiar lines of sage 
Dr. Holmes : 

" Be firm! One constant element of luck 
Is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck. 
Stick to jour aim! The mongrel's hold will slip, 
But only crowbars loose the bulldog's grip. 
Small though he looks, the jaw that never yields 
Drags down the bellowing monarch of the fields.' ' 
137 



138 HOW TO WORK. 

Those resolute jaws under that tree in Indiana 
shook out many a tough problem for me in 
my college days, mastered many a lesson. 
When my brains begun in every convolution 
to shrink from the task, when the air of the 
room settled down upon me like a hot, suffo- 
cating weight, when the words in the text- 
book, from an incomprehensible meaning, 
ceased to have any meaning at all, — then I 
remembered Edward Eggleston ; I said to my- 
self, " Fool ! To be worsted by half a hun- 
dred lines of type!" I clinched my hands 
and my teeth, rushed forward and grappled 
with that text-book doggedly, got a mental 
grip upon it that no interruption, no wander- 
ing thought, no shout from the campus, no 
butterfly at the window, could for an instant 
relax, and I worried it, and I shook it up and 
down, and got a bigger mouthful, and at last 
I saw it at my feet — conquered. 

It is this element of fierceness that wins 
battles. There is a certain note which, if a 
general can ever get into his soldier's yell, 
means victory every time. Ordinarily we use 
only the surface of our will, just as in ordinary 
exercise, so the doctors say, we use only the 
surface of our muscles. There are exercises, 

hard and long continued, which bring into 
play the deepest muscular fibres, and really 



THE BULLDOG GRIP. 139 

make a man strong. Something like that is 
what I am urging for your work, no surface 
energy, no nibbling with long teeth, but a 
fierce, savage plunge at the vitals of the task. 

It is this that makes the difference between 
successful farming and fruitless farming — this, 
among other things : the lazy farmer will not 
plow deep. As in the old days, yes, and 
as still in many of the slothful tropical lands, 
it is held sufficient to scratch the ground with 
a pointed stick of wood. As Douglas Jerrold 
said of Australia, " One has only to tickle the 
ground with a hoe, and it laughs in a harvest." 
But such tickling of most fields brings a rain 
of tears rather than a harvest of fortunes. 
Push through the root mold, thrust aside the 
disputing stones, press down into the rich 
heart of things, plow deep, if you would reap 
a goodly fortune. 

All analogies point to this strenuous injunc- 
tion, and I have little doubt that most workers 
will promptly accept it as a true guide for suc- 
cessful labor; but recognition of a truth is 
very different from following it ; so very dif- 
ferent ! The allurements are many, and the 
flesh is weak. Many a lesson has been a fail- 
ure because the scholar cheated himself into 
thinking that what his brain needed was a 
little rest, that after a game of ball or a 



140 HOW TO WORK. 

night's sleep the problem would solve itself 
before his delighted, invigorated mind. Many 
a victory has been lost for the lack of just one 
more charge. Many a house has been ruined 
because the roof was not clapped on as soon 
as the walls were up. Many a crop has been 
spoiled because, after it was brought into 
heaps, the heaps were not immediately carried 
to the barn. It is the long pulls that make 
the oarsman, and it is the long pulls that make 
the workman. I have a great respect for the 
tradesman's sign, " Done While you Wait." 
At that shop, at least, there is no dilly- 
dallying. 

A jolly party of us once spent two weeks 
together in the Maine woods, and one of the 
jolliest of all was a certain distinguished 
clergyman whom we will call Dr. Peace. 
Now Dr. Peace, being enterprising, took it 
into his head that he would learn to paddle a 
canoe — an art he had never yet attempted. 
We used to stand on the shore, — all eight of 
us, — and double ourselves up with laughter at 
his antics. He would be paddling along, a 
most determined expression upon his face, be- 
coining a beatific expression as the tricksy 
craft actually seemed under his control at last, 
and going straight where lie wanted it to go. 
But, alas! along would come a whill' of wind 



THE BULLDOG GRIP. 141 

and would slue him round in a jiffy. With a 
mortified and disappointed air he would look 
up to see if any one was watching, would per- 
ceive the spectators on the shore, and try to 
paddle out of sight, always bringing up in a 
circle again. 

But one day Dr. Peace came into camp 
, radiant. " I've got it ! " he exclaimed. " Did 
you see me ? I'm boss at last. No adventi- 
tious canoe can get ahead of me ! " 

" Well, how do you do it ? " we inquired 
with respectful interest. 

" How ? I back her into the wind. Yes, 
sir, whenever the w T ind swings her around, I 
just back up. So I get where I want to go. 
Stern foremost ? Yes, sir. What's the dif- 
ference ? I get there, sir. I arrive." 

This manoeuvre of the genial doctor's pro- 
duced no end of amusement, as we saw it 
proudly illustrated on the very next oppor- 
tunit} r . His progress was a combination of 
progression, oscillation, and retrogression, but, 
as he said, he^ got there. It was not long 
after this surprising discovery that he became 
in very truth master of the canoe, and could 
direct it bow-foremost in the face of any 
wind. 

So much for determination. So much for 
good-natured grit. We all, I think, took the 



142 HOW TO WORK. 

little lesson to our own lives, and decided that 
hereafter, though contrary winds might blow 
around the uncertain craft of our fortunes, we 
would not lose our course, we would " back 
her up into the wind," we would not be too 
dignified to go stern foremost, and in some 
way — if not in the best way, then in the 
second-best way — we would arrive. 

An artist once showed me a fine bit of land- 
scape — a wind-blown marsh, with a pool in 
the centre which reflected the blue sky and 
the dark shadow of a coming thunderstorm. 
" I spent about ten minutes on that," he said 
to me ; " I had never painted so fast in my 
life. The light-effects were changing every 
instant." 

" And when will you finish it ? " I asked, in 
my stupidity. 

"Finish it? It is done! When the scene 
changed I could not add another stroke with- 
out spoiling it. My chance had been given 
me, and I had used it." 

Toilers, enter upon every task with the 
ardor of that impressionist painter. You see 
before von some ideal of achievement. You 
have the opportunity to transfer it to the 
canvas of reality and permanence, to make it 
the, world's eternal possession. Grasp the 
palette with eagerness. Seize a handful of 



TEE BULLDOG GRIP. 143 

brushes. Eyes intent, hands swift, mind 
stretched forth like a greyhound in the chase, 
capture the fleeting vision before the sun goes 
behind the cloud. 




CHAPTEE XXX. 

OUR BREATHITNTG-SPELLS. 

ID you ever consider the importance 
of that gap between the steel rails 
of a railway ? Without it, the ex- 
pansion of the steel in summer, hav- 
ing no longitudinal outlet, would bend and 
twist .the rail sideways, and our American 
record of railway accidents would be far worse 
even than it is. Alas ! many a life-train has 
been wrecked because there were no gaps in 
the plans along which it ran. 

" Make a programme for the day," say the 
moralists, and they say well ; only, they often 
forget to add, " Insert in your programme a 
few intermissions." "I will do this," we say 
in the morning, "and after 1 have done this I 
will take up that, and after that I will accom- 
plish the other, and after the other the next 
thing," and so on through all the hours. AVe 
plan to do too much. 

One of the results is disappointment, for we 
cannot do all we plan to do. AVe end the day 
with an uneasy sense of tasks still untouched, 

l li 



OUB BREATHING-SPELLS. 145 

a docket far from cleared. Others might deem 
us to have accomplished a good day's work, 
but the things we meant to do and didn't, 
blind us to the things we did do. Then come 
the blues. 

We ought to plan for rest, for doing nothing, 
— or as near to nothing as this work-crazed 
world can come to. We ought to imitate 
God's wisdom in nature, and provide seasons 
of fallow ground and of hibernating. But we 
expect to go right on raising crops of energy 
and enthusiasm and all sorts of activity from 
the same ground, without a particle of the re- 
cuperation and fertilization of fruitful repose. 

Some folks will think this advice very un- 
wise. They will have in mind the shirks, the 
sluggards, whom we have to be continually 
prodding to get them to do any work at all. 
" They will take your words as an excuse for 
laziness," urge the critics. Well, let them, 
then, though they have no business to. If not 
that excuse, they would have some other. I 
am not going to permit my care for them to 
keep me from giving a greatly needed warning 
to the precious lives that are doing the world's 
work. 

To you, then, toilers, and to you alone, I 
would cry : " Live for the eternities ! There's 
a year to come after this, and a year after that 



146 HOW TO WORK. 

year. God does not want you to do it all at 
once. God wants you to work as He works, 
without hurry or worry, and with a plenty of 
joyous repose. Keep fresh — for His sake! 
Keep young and vigorous and smooth-browed 
— for His sake ! Live for His eternity, into 
which He wants to welcome us strong and 
alert and buoyant, ready for age-long service 
with Him." 

Now vacations help, but vacations come to 
most men only once a year, and go as rapidly 
as they are slow in coming. The great vaca- 
tion, after all, is made up of fifty-two days, the 
Sabbaths of the twelvemonth. Those are the 
worker's chief breathing-spells, and I should 
send out a very incomplete book upon work if 

I said in it nothing about Sabbath-keeping. 
All ten of the commandments are working 
rules, but the fourth is preeminently the com- 
mandment for workers. 

If you want to know whether you are keep- 
ing Sunday, ask yourselves earnestly whether 
you are keeping it. What do I mean ? To 
explain. 

We never talk about "keeping" Monday, 
Tuesday, Wednesday. These days have their 
fixed and peculiar duties and observances much 
as Sunday lias, but the truth is that instead of 

II keeping" Monday and the rest of the week- 



OUR BREATHING-SPELLS. 147 

days, they " keep " a great deal of us. They 
keep so much of us that on Monday night we 
are usually, if we are common, average folk, a 
little worse off, physically and mentally, — yes, 
even spiritually, often, — than we were Monday 
morning. And so with the rest of the days, 
up to Saturday night. 

I am not saying that it is best, of right, that 
the week-days should keep so much of our 
strength and our mental faculties and our 
good temper and our hope and faith. I am 
only talking about facts. 

But we all have known days at whose end 
we felt ourselves born into a new life. Since 
the dawn we have come into wondrous acces- 
sions of strength and knowledge and beauty 
and joy. The day has built itself into a per- 
manent addition to our lives. We have 
" kept " it. 

Such days — whether the first day of the 
week, or the third, it matters not — are Sab- 
baths. And such days will all our Sabbaths 
be, if we " keep " them aright. 

This, then, is the test of your keeping of the 
Sabbath. At the close of the Lord's Day are 
you refreshed in bodily powers ? You have 
kept it. Is your mind stored with a new 
treasure of noble thought? You have kept it. 
Are you happier, braver, more contented, trust- 



148 HOW TO WORK. 

ful, and loving? You have kept it. But if 
you are weary and fretful, sad and selfish, you 
have not kept it ; it has kept you. 

The Sabbath is for the eternities. It is for 
permanence. It is for building, for accretion, 
for keeping. " Is not Monday also for these 
things ? " you ask. " Have we kept Monday 
unless at its close we are stronger, wiser, hap- 
pier, than at its beginning ? " Assuredly, no. 
If we look well to our Sunday-keeping, how- 
ever, we need not greatly fear. We shall then 
keep Monday, and Tuesday, and all the days 
of the week. 

I have just said that our fifty-two Sabbaths 
are the chief breathing-spells of the year. That 
was a thoughtless remark, for it left out of 
account our daily Sabbaths, the holy night- 
times. A worker, after all, is made or un- 
made, not by his working but by his sleeping 
hours. 

The well-known Philadelphia physician, Dr. 
William Pepper, although he died at the age 
of fifty-five, is said to have done as much work 
as an ordinary man living to reach one hun- 
dred years. This he accomplished through 
his enviable power of sleeping just when he 
wished. 

He would of ton interrupt a consultation 
with a patient by saving, " Excuse me, madam, 



OUB BREATHING-SPELLS. 149 

but I could talk with you more satisfactorily 
if I had a few minutes' nap." Throwing him- 
self on a lounge and telling a servant to wake 
him up in ten minutes, he would drop off at 
once into profound slumber, from which he 
would spring refreshed when awaked, and 
would take up the business just where he had 
left it. 

As he was being driven from one appoint- 
ment to another of his busy life, he would 
sleep in his carriage. He could sleep on 
trains. He would sleep in the parlors of 
strangers, no matter what was thought of him. 
In fine, he was a master of somnolence. 

That is an art especially to be cultivated in 
these hurrying, bustling days, these days of 
nervous prostration and paralysis. We need 
not become Dickens's Fat Boys ; Dr. Pepper 
certainly did not. But the first requirement 
of our physical being, proper sleep, is far 
nearer to godliness than even the cleanliness of 
the proverb. 

Dr. Hale once wrote it as his opinion that a 
healthy man should be able to fall asleep at 
any time he chose, and anywhere. A healthy 
baby can. If this is true, how far from health 
is the average man ! Insomnia, one of the 
most terrible of diseases, is sadly common. 
Millions of men and women have almost lost 



150 HOW TO WORK. 

the blessed knowledge of sound sleep. Their 
nights are as full of tossings as their days of 
fretfulness and fume. It is the rattle and 
roar of the iron horse by day, followed, of 
course, by the nightmare. And to the young 
— alas and alas ! — the fearful contagion of un- 
rest is rapidly passing. 

And what is the remedy ? Not in drugs, 
where hundreds of thousands are seeking it. 
In those drugs lie coiled the chains of one of 
the most fearful slaveries groaning man has 
ever known. Not in philosophy or mind- 
cures, reason how you will. In none of these 
things ; but in this : " I will both lay me 
down in peace and sleep, for Thou, Lord, 
alone makest me dwell in safety." That is it. 
" lie giveth unto His beloved sleep." 

It is the Christian contentment, the Chris- 
tian self-denial, the Christian resignation of 
this world, the Christian peace of conscience, 
and the Christian joy ; it is this happy frame 
of mind that alone can cure insomnia. In the 
matter of Bleep, as in other matters, the Chris- 
tian lias become as a little child. And we 
know of no better test of one's Christianity 
than this. 




CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE TRIVIAL ROUND. 

LADY once heard a friend quote the 
well-known line from a beautiful 
hymn, " The trivial round, the com- 
mon task." " O don't say that ! " she 
exclaimed, impulsively. " I could not stand it 
if that were all, if it were only a round, if the 
routine began to-morrow just where it left off 
to-day, and I had it all to do over again with- 
out any progress. It is trivial enough — my 
life, — but it must be more than a circle, or I 
cannot endure it." 

That is the feeling of us all. We can do 
the common task, we can support the dull 
routine, if we know that we are getting some- 
where, if we see the goal approaching, how- 
ever slowly. But a treadmill, especially a 
treadmill yoked to no achieving machine, — 
nothing in the universe is more dreary than 
that. 

Fortunately, though there is a trivial round, 
and though far too many lives have adopted 
it as their order, there need be no such thing 

151 



152 HOW TO WORK. 

in any life. The rest of the stanza gives the 
true doctrine. Read : 

"The trivial round, the common task, 
Will furnish all we ought to ask : 
Room to deny ourselves, a road 
To lead us daily nearer God. ' ' 

So it seems that the " trivial round " which 
the poet had in view is not a circle or a dead 
level, but round and round on an ascending 
spiral, a great winding staircase, hard enough 
to climb, as we all know, but conducting us 
through all the damp stones and the darkness 
and the weariness and the monotony, up to a 
bright, sunny platform whence the kingdoms 
of all happiness will be outspread before our 
deHghted vision, for we shall have mounted 
into the paradise of God. 



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